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The Aviator (2004)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
7/25
7/25:
Just what I thought: Martin Scorsese somewhat can't do it without Robert De Niro.
Six out of his eight best films involve the actor. The other two?
The Color of Money and After Hours.
After Casino, the director keeps getting worse and is nothing like how he used
to be. The evidences are Bringing Out the Dead,
The Aviator, and The Departed.
The problem is they are too long, not well-edited, and rambling with totally mediocre acting. I couldn't watch
The Aviator without taking a lot of breaks. Every ten minutes feels three times as long. Leonardo
DiCaprio plays Howard Hughes? He looks like a baby-faced highschooler who's desperate in being taken
seriously as an adult.
Why a part of Howard Hughes' life that takes place from 1927 to 1947? He was born in 1905 and died in 1976.
Nobody cares about his achievements in aviation, but the final quarter of his life is extremely fascinating
as recounted in Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years by James Phelan. Otherwise, he's just another dead
billionaire.
The H-4 Hercules flew? Yeah, right. That monstrous thing was a colossal waste of money. It barely got off the
sea, having been in air for only one mile, and was never flown again. Cate Blanchett, Gwen Stefani, and Kate
Beckinsale as Katharine Hepburn (who didn't have a relationship with Spencer Tracy until after 1941, and they
were actually gay and may have used each other as a beard), Jean Harlow, and Ava Gardner, respectively? Ha!
They should retire from acting for good. How about Howard Hughes' marriage to Ella Botts Rice that's not shown
in the film?
If I were Martin Scorsese, I would stick with either two aspects: Howard Hughes' forays in the
movie business or the last twenty years of his life. Instead, what I saw is largely unfocused and fictional
(they used Charles Higham's book for this? That's funny. He's been a longtime discredited author because of
numerous fabrications. Why not use Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes by Noah Dietrich?). Sure,
Hell's Angels is covered at the beginning which omits the
plane crash that fractured Howard Hughes' skull, but what about Scarface
or how he ran RKO into the ground but came out ahead at the end?
The cinematography looks either fake, garish, or terrible. I can't believe it was handled by Robert Richardson
which won him his second of three Oscars. This is the same guy who did almost all of Oliver Stone's movies,
going back to Salvador. Shame on Thelma Schoonmaker as well because some of
the scenes are too fast that I had to rewind to catch what's going on. She even won an Oscar for it which is
to show you what a gigantic joke the Academy has become.
All in all, Martin Scorsese should've watched Citizen Kane many
times to understand how a biopic should be done before setting out to make The Aviator, and while at
it, he needs to stop using Leonardo DiCaprio because he's no Robert De Niro.