The Aviator A Movie Review	MPAA Rated - PG-13 It's 2:50 Long A Review by The Dude on the Right

Let’s get to it…

In another Academy Awardable role, we get Leonardo DiCaprio whom I call one of the luckiest men alive. Why? Because in his role as Howard Hughes, he gets to feel up Kate Beckinsale who plays Ava Gardner, and I consider Kate as one of the best looking women alive. But enough of my jealousy, Leonardo, and quite honestly everyone in this movie is fantastic.

Well, "The Aviator" gives us this take on the life of Howard Hughes. We begin with an opening shot of a young Hughes being scrubbed clean by his mother, who enhances his spelling skills making sure he knows to stay away from houses with words like cholera and quarantine on their doors. We can surmise from this that maybe his germ-phobia developed because of his mother, but what do I know. Now shift to Howard a little older, blowing his riches on his first movie "Hell’s Angels," which at first became the laughing stock of Hollywood because of how much Howard spent on the film and his directing style, but when the finished product proved amazing, Howard became a film icon. But the movie also introduced us to Howard’s other love, his love for airplanes.

And so, we shift the story away from Howard Hughes the filmmaker, now we see Howard Hughes the businessman in the aircraft industry, and we really start to see Howard becoming the germ-phobic eccentric that sadly became as much of his legacy as his movie and business practices. On the aircraft side we see Howard as the visionary, testing his designers to design what he sees in his mind, and he’s not afraid to test the designs himself, we also see Howard recognizing the opportunity of the industry as he acquires TWA and seeks to dethrone the politically connected Pan Am.

We also get Howard Hughes the ladies man, and this is where director Martin Scorsese shows his talent in picking the right people for roles because as the glamorous Jean Harlow Scorsese tapped Gwen Stefani, relatively unknown on the Hollywood screen, but she pulled off Harlow nicely. For the woman who was able to bring Howard out of totally losing his mind for a little bit, Scorsese gives us Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. You already know how I feel about Kate, and in this role she is just as stunning as ever. But nothing against these lovely ladies, the one who really steals the show is Cate Blanchett as the feisty Katherine Hepburn. I don’t really know if she got the accent right, but even if not, she was perfect in my mind.

Yes, "The Aviator" gives us filmmaking at it’s best, and we really wouldn’t expect any less from Scorsese, but the movie is a tad long, tapping the over 2 ½ hour mark. Sadly, this did come into play for me and that will knock it down a little in the rating. The thing is I don’t really know why it seemed to play long, it was just that at one point the movie dragged a little, I looked at my watch and it said we were only about 50 minutes into the movie, and from that point on it just seemed a little long.

So, wrapping up, "The Aviator" for me is a fantastic film that just didn’t hold me fixated on the movie for the 2 ½ hours. I’ll only dock it half a star and still give it 4 ½ stars out of 5 just for the airplane scenes and Leonardo being able to slide his hand down the front of Kate Beckinsale’s dress. Everything else in the film just adds to that.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!