The Aviator | Telescope Film
The Aviator

The Aviator

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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.

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What are users saying?

Ting Shing Koh

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.

What are critics saying?

100

The New Yorker by David Denby

Brilliantly entertaining.

100

Variety by Todd McCarthy

An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes.

100

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

This is one of the year's best films.

100

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.

100

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated.

100

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.

91

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!

91

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining.

90

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.

90

Newsweek by David Ansen

DiCaprio is astonishing.

80

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."

80

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.

75

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.

75

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

A flawed but entertaining (and perhaps informative) tale.

70

Time by Richard Corliss

Despite its star's heroic efforts, The Aviator is a gorgeous jet, flying on automatic pilot.

50

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.