Very good overall....

Rating: 8/10 (31 December 2004)

Just saw this. Well what can ya say--Leo is up to it bigtime here, plays Howard Hughes to a T. Quite believable, tics, plane wiz and mogul all in one piece. You know as bad as he was in 'Man in the Iron Mask' for example, when DeCaprio shows up--he can be great.
I won't go into this that much--save for the good parts: Cate Blanchette as Kate Hepburn. Unreal. Nails it.
Kate Beckinsdale as Ava Gardner. Very good--Marcia Gay Harden was better though 12 years ago in the Sinatra mini-series.
Flight sequences--Hell's Angels or the Spy plane that crashes or the Beetfield landing--you get right into it and this delivers. Those crash scenes. Wow.
What doesn't work so good? Parade of long-ago Hollywood names-Errol Flynn, Linda Darnell, Faith Domergue--yah Howard had his starlet harem, but I am sure it's a stretch to find many who remember either Faith or Darnell unfortunately. (Who remembers Jean Tripplehorn today, for example? That was 10 years ago....) Martin Scorsese kinda rammed that stuff in a little too fast at times.
The long, long segment on Howard's madness gets hard to watch too-peeing in bottles etc. Yah it's what he became and what he is remembered for now unfortunately--but in the 3rd hour, it does slow the movie down badly.
Alan Alda as Sen Brewster during the hearings-that's very good. I liked that part. Certainly shows Hughes rising to the occasion too despite having his sanity leave bit by bit.
Overall--this should be an Oscar winner esp Leo and that's saying something for me, not being a Leo fan period.
***1/2 outta ****