Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Martin Scorsese
Cast
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Cate Blanchett,
Kate Beckinsale,
John C. Reilly,
Alec Baldwin,
Alan Alda
Genre
Drama
Filmmaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes is one of the richest and most successful public figures of the early twentieth century. In private, he suffers from debilitating depression and severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, both of which throw his life into chaos and cause him to descend into volatility that may upend his life's work.
This film throws you into a frenzy, as we follow successful yet eccentric tycoon Hughes through his battle with his inner demons. The storyline might be slightly flawed, but that doesn't stop DiCaprio from delivering an amazing performance, one that will make you forget the little discrepancies in the plot.
The New Yorker by David Denby
Brilliantly entertaining.
Variety by Todd McCarthy
An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
This is one of the year's best films.
Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow
If you didn't know that Martin Scorsese made The Aviator, the enthralling new adventure-biography of Howard Hughes, you might think it was the calling card of a neophyte visual genius.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated.
USA Today by Mike Clark
Despite the film's sporadic lulls, both director and star are on full beam. The first and third hours of this 20th-century epic are as dazzling as big-scale movies get.
Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy
The Aviator, though, if not prime Scorsese, is the closest thing in a long time to the old Scorsese. What a splendid year-end gift!
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Ken Tucker
The result is an admirably bumpy ride of a biopic, a rare one that leaves you feeling not safe but bracingly unsettled.
Newsweek by David Ansen
DiCaprio is astonishing.
The A.V. Club by Nathan Rabin
A frenzied, sometimes overreaching biopic that paints in bold colors on a huge canvas, the film stars a never-better Leonardo DiCaprio--as perfectly cast here as he was miscast in "Gangs."
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
Scorsese has crafted a rip-roaringly gorgeous-looking, beautifully acted biographical epic. But while firing on all cylinders, there's something oddly distancing about the picture.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Scorsese, I think, is so invested in making The Aviator upbeat and rousing that the movie never quite reveals, the way that "Kinsey" or "Ray" or "A Beautiful Mind" or even a good E! True Hollywood Story do, how its hero's vision and his grand torments could be flip sides of the same temperament.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
A flawed but entertaining (and perhaps informative) tale.
Time by Richard Corliss
Despite its star's heroic efforts, The Aviator is a gorgeous jet, flying on automatic pilot.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
The Aviator could've been a "Raging Bull" brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short.
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