Note, this review will contain spoilers.
Basically, the movie is about Aviation pioneer and hollywood hotshot Howard Hughes' life between the late 20s and the late 40s. The movie begins and you have no idea what is going on. A mother is washing some crusties out of a litlle kids butt while he is trying to succesfully spell quarantee (see I can't even do it.) Flash forward to the 1920s (the titles tell us where we are and who is who) and we see Hughes working furiously on his film "Hells Angels"
and then three hours later, the movie ends. There is too much material to explain here, go to Yahoo! movies http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1808411951&cf=info&intl=us for a full bio of the film.
Leo did a good job throughout the whole movie but was a bit over doing it with the obsessive compulsive sindrome scenes. He is convincing and even looks like the real Hughes.
The guy from Boogie Nights (John C. Reily) has a short part in this film as Howard's financial consultant, and he pulls it off nicely.
Alec Baldwin is stiff as usual, seeing as the last successful film he was in was Pearl Harbor, and he was stiff in that one too. He has constant turtle face and has spurs of bad acting.
The guy that was in "Mash" (Alan Ada) is a super crusty senator from Maine who wants nothing more than to stop Hughes aircraft from ever becoming popular (or TWA for that matter). Like I said, he had crusty (constipated) face all through out the movie, but did an overall good job.
Kate Beckinsale had a short part in this film, she did fine, although I couldn't differentiate between her and this other girl who looks exactly the same.
Cate Blanchet did a mediocre job playing Katherine Hepburn. She too has a tendancy to overdo it. She also has a big nose.
The special effects are almost non existant in this film but when they are in use, they are done well, like the scene with the plane crashing through the house in Beverly Hills (which can be seen in the trailer.)
The story and directing are a bit sloppy however, and I felt it jumped around quite too much and often I didn't know what was going on. Also, the movie gets slow at times and makes you wish it would hurry up.
I thought Leo did a good job with the OCD, except he may have overdone it a bit. Thats probably what saved the storyline towards the end.
This is only one of a few movies of Martin Scorsese's direction I've actually seen. He does have his good moments in the film but , again, half of the movie was really slow.
Overall, I was entertained by this movie, but was disappointed that it was so long and often slow. The actors all did good (except Baldwin which was to be expected) in their respected roles, and it is a good history flick if you ever want to see one.
Wish I had 135 cameras to film a movie, course thats the way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future.
Freddie Farz Jr. viewed this movie last week but lost the ticket stub so no absolute record was kept. DOH!
This review can also be seen on the main reviews page with a link to this very forum, hea hea.