Tag: Leonardo DiCaprio

The Departed

MPAA Rated – R
It’s 2:31 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right

The Departed
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin
MPAA Rated: R
Released By: Warner Bros.
Release Date: 2006
Directed By: Martin Scorsese

I guess this is a remake of some big Asian film from a few year’s back, but if it gets released on its tentative date, October 6th, Oscar buzz will already start hitting this film if only because Martin Scorsese is directing and it’s got a great cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin. From what I can gather you get the Irish-American mafia infiltrating the Boston police department, and the Boston police department infiltrating the Irish-American mafia, and they all have their allegiances both to who they’re spying on and who they’re spying for.

Right now the movie looks to be very entertaining, and it’s rated R for three great reasons in my book, strong brutal violence, pervasive language, some strong sexual content and as an added bonus, drug material.

Scorsese’s got the track record, especially when it comes to movies like this, so I doubt he’ll screw it up.

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

The Aviator

MPAA Rated – PG-13
It’s 2:50 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right

The Aviator
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Gwen Stefani, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe
MPAA Rated: PG-13
Released By: Miramax
Kiddie Movie: Leave them at home.
Date Movie: It’s good for couples.
Gratuitous Sex: You get some, but it’s PG-13 sex.
Gratuitous Violence: No violence.
Action: A great crash sequence.
Laughs: There’s a few.
Memorable Scene: When Howard’s plane crashes into Beverly Hills, and Leonardo feeling up Kate.
Memorable Quote: None stand out.
Directed By: Martin Scorsese

I really don’t remember Howard Hughes, just heard some weird stories about the man, so I don’t know how true to life “The Aviator” is, but as a movie, it’s fantastic, but sometimes a little slow/long.

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!!!

The Beach

MPAA Rated – R
It’s 1:53 Long
A Review by:
– The Dude on the Right

The Beach
Movie Stats & Links
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Virginie Ledoyen, Robert Carlisle
MPAA Rated: R
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Kiddie Movie: Not at all.
Date Movie: I saw two couples leave in the middle – leave her at home.
Gratuitous Sex: Sex and nudity and I’m still only giving it 1 1/2 star.
Gratuitous Violence: People get shot and some shark wounds.
Action: Some chasing.
Laughs: The movie.
Memorable Scene: The shark wounds.
Memorable Quote: “We’re in dope heaven!”
Directed By: Danny Boyle

Because I’m usually pretty easy to please, if you put some quality violence, some nice gore, a hot lady or two (getting naked is a plus), and the potential for a good movie, well, everything can suck and I’ll still give it a decent rating. “The Beach” had all of that, but I just can’t get past the scene where Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes nuts. It was at that point that I saw two couples leave the movie, and I wanted to also except I had to see where it would all end up. It ended up with a commercial for Macintosh.

I don’t know, ever since “Titanic” it seems like I’ve seen DiCaprio trying to get out of the teenage heart-throb persona that it gave him. There were the stories of his bar hopping in L.A., there was his role in “Celebrity,” and now there is “The Beach.” As Richard, he narrates his way into Bangkok, where he seems to intentionally over-emphasize the “kok” part when he says it, finding himself sick of home and looking for adventure. Shacking up in a bug-infested hotel, one room next to him holds the hot Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen) while the opposite room holds the psychotic Daffy (Robert Carlisle). While sharing a joint through the wall partition, Daffy tells Richard of this beautiful island paradise, with the coolest beach and the best pot. As Richard’s fate has it, the next day there is a map on his door to the island, Daffy went totally wacky, and Richard asks Francoise and her boyfriend if they want to try and find the island. They go along.

So, yea, they find the island paradise, half inhabited by pot-growing folk ready to kill anyone who invades their plantation, the other half inhabited by a commune of hippie-folk, seemingly self-sufficient until someone makes a run to the mainland when the necessities of home become more important than the beautiful beach. Well, Richard falls for Francoise (there’s a surprise – who wouldn’t?), she falls for him, they get naked in the lagoon, and all is well until a group of folks who Richard slipped a copy of the map to try to show up. Richard is sent to a twisted solitary confinement waiting for them to arrive so he can steal the map back, and in the meantime, well, goes insane.

I suspended my disbelief about the movie up until this point because it was a movie, but when Richard finds himself hallucinatingly traipsing through the jungle after the enemy, my suspension of reality turned to “when is this going to end?”

DiCaprio does a decent job as the thrill-seeking Richard, Ledoven is hot and gets naked, you’ve got a couple of gruesome shark bites, and some folks get gunned down. The movie had potential, but seemed to overdue it on the shock value instead of keeping a little bit of realism. My main case in point on this was Daffy’s suicide. The story was that Daffy slit his wrists, his guts, or maybe his neck. Fine, the dude killed himself, but the room, with blood everywhere, and I mean everywhere, looked like his body exploded rather than just a suicide. Maybe a hopped-up-on-drugs suicide can splatter blood all over a room, what do I know, but it just bothered me.

So, with that, I say wait for cable on this one, even with the blood, gore, sex, nudity, and potential for a good story. It just doesn’t go there. 1 ½ star out of 5.

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