I watched the movie to see Kate Beckinsale, and she was gorgeous as Ava Gardner. Actually, she's prettier than the real Ava!Kate is such an amazing actress. I can never praise her enough. She is truly versatile, starring in a wide range of movies, from Shakespeare, to Jane Austen, to crime thrillers, to modern action Gothic masterpiece Underworld! You name it. She can pull it off perfectly.Even though Kate has only a small role in this, she shines as Ava Gardner, who would only ask Mr. Hughes to buy her dinner.I also find the hearing at the climax very interesting. I like the way Hughes beat the senator. It was quite witty and impressive. Besides, Leonardo was brilliant in acting out the misery of having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.Alan Alda portrayed the cunning and manoevering politician very well. Cate Blanchett's laughter was so crazy that I didn't even recognize her at first.

I really wish there was an option for zero stars because this garbage is that bad. It is so boring that at the end of the film you have to check your pulse to make sure you have not died of boredom. How the budget for this film was so high is beyond me since two hours of it takes place in a single room with barely any dialogue. The movie drags, drags, drags, and just when you think there is light at the end of the tunnel and that it is over it drags on long. It is almost three hours of absolutely painful torture. This is hands down the absolute worst film I have ever seen. The film is about Howard Hughs and his OCD, but even as someone with OCD myself I still could not appreciate any of this. (And his case was portrayed to be very extreme by the way.) There was absolutely no reason for this movie to drag on for three hours it could have been wrapped up in an hour and a half. It drags on since it is supposed to be a "masterpiece" but it is horrible. Hands down this is one of the absolute worst and torturous movies I have ever had to sit through. Terrible

The Story of Aviator Howard Hughes.Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale.Written by John Logan.Directed by Martin Scorsese.I can see why this movie has won so many Oscars. It has all the right ingredients. Great acting, great cinematography, great photography and it is undeniably and unreservedly a Martin Scorsese movie with all of his trademark style and artistry. It's one hell of a production which I'm sure had the Oscar Nominations Board purring and salivating non-stop round the clock.It is fascinating and it is an interesting watch but for me it's too long and a little bit boring. Just because a movie wins lots of Oscars doesn't necessarily mean it's an exciting movie and this fits into that category. It reminded me of Citizen Kane and I'd go as far as saying that it's basically the same kind of thing produced for a more modern audience. And that movie was pretty boring too.This is a film I can appreciate on many levels but it's lacking a decent hook and a good dollop of excitement.7.5/10 for the acting and production values.

Can the outsized ambition of one of Hollywood's biggest legends smash Hollywood convention and make a picture for the ages? How about two legends, then? Star Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese give it a ride, anyway.Howard Hughes inherited a lot of money and a fear of germs. Enjoying the first before the second tears him apart, he sets about making a movie that runs up seven-figure bills in 1927, then scraps it and remakes it for sound. "Hell's Angels" turns out quite a hit, but Hughes has already moved on to other passions, building experimental planes and bedding Hollywood starlets. Sure it sounds like fun, but can he survive the crash landings?One of his lovers, Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), puts it this way: "There's too much Howard Hughes in Howard Hughes. That's the trouble."That's the trouble with "The Aviator," too. Taking a 20-year wedge of Hughes' life that incorporated everything from round-the-world flights to building a transcontinental airline, the movie struggles for a focus. In a five-minute span, we see Hughes design a monoplane, take Jean Harlow to a film premiere, and found a future mega-business, Hughes Aircraft. Scorsese is in a hurry to dazzle you with overlit sequences and fuzzy CGI.DiCaprio's ascension to the ranks of Hollywood's elite seems to have been the true focus of this film. He's fine, too, shedding his youthful image with an eerie approximation of Hughes' Texas drawl that is equal parts authority and anxiety. I just felt there were times when too much of the director's attention was on having Leo do an acting clinic and show the Oscar people something. He's best here working off other people, namely Alan Alda as a nasty senator named Brewster set on bringing Hughes down.Alda was nominated for an Oscar; Blanchett won one, either her first or Hepburn's fifth. It's a clenched, tinny performance, i. e. true to life and hard to take for more than a few minutes at a time. Fortunately, Kate/Cate makes an early exit, albeit not soon enough for me. What was the point of her character, anyway? If she's supposed to represent Hughes' truest object of desire, she doesn't have the air-speed velocity.The film does improve as it goes on, reversing the Hughes experience in life. The climax is a hearing held by Brewster in which both Alda and DiCaprio show how good this film might have been had it cut out the starlets and the flying montages and just gotten to the part where Hughes takes on the country and Pan-American Airways while his growing mental issues gnaw away at him. Watching Brewster switch from wolf to sheep as Hughes finds his footing is a joy.Even in this section, though, Scorsese spends long minutes on DiCaprio raging and writhing alone in the nude in order to let us know he's really suffering, not trusting his actor to show us the same thing in numerous small moments where the story is being advanced as well. The film is never boring, just muddled and straining at a significance it doesn't reach. Like one of Hughes' most famous creations, the giant airplane nicknamed the "Spruce Goose" which "The Aviator" climaxes with, what you have here is an overloaded creation that struggles to get in the air, and doesn't stay up long.