The Aviator

Martin Scorsese's latest is overhyped, and I didn't like it. Sorry, but I had to open like that, because this movie is going to win the Oscar, but just for the lack of other big Hollywood movies this year (Indies and not big Hollywood productions was really what it was all about this year), and because Scorsese deserves to get one for directing and not get one in 20 years as Life Achievement Award.
The main performances here are great, so that saved it for me a little bit, but overall I just couldn't get me to like it.

I'll start with Leonardo DiCaprio, which I've loved pretty much in everything he's done, and he's truly excellent here as Howard Hughes. We see his passion (to the point of obsession) for airplanes and women, spending on them huge amounts of money without caring. Hughes is crazy about them, and DiCaprio is plays him with a maturity and power that I haven't seen on him before.
I haven't seen Jamie Fox's Ray yet but DiCaprio is my front runner to win the Oscar so far. I loved Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine), Paul Giamatti (Sideways) and Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland), but Leo's performance is just too powerful.

Virginia Madsen (Sideways) is going to have a hard time too, because Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn is also wonderful. I'm really loving Cate this year after watching The Life Aquatic and The Aviator in a row, she's awesome.
I have to point out that I started hating Hepburn at the beginning of the movie. I don't know if she was really like that but the first minutes she's onscreen she's so annoying I thought I wasn't going to be able to listen to her for three hours (though she's not in the movie all the time but yes, the movie is two hours fifty minutes long). But then she got close to Hughes, and she was just lovable, and Blanchett's performance was just excellent.

Then there's Kate Beckinsale playing a not very good written Ava Gardner (I didn't get why she was with Hughes nor when did they get together, she just appeared on the movie with him). Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin and Ian Holm are also there and they are all good. And Gwen Stefani playing Jean Harlow just because she looks like her.
The character is only in the movie for one scene, and she's the only other star (besides Hepburn and Gardner) that we see Hughes date, though he's supposed to have dated everybody in Hollywood, taking a different Star to each movie premiere. This was a problem for me, as I felt that the Stefani's character was only created to get her in a movie.

So where are my problems? I'm having trouble finding them, but it's mostly the hype this movie has, specially because I think that other directors (like Alexander Payne, Michel Gondry, Walter Salles, Quentin Tarantino and Michael Mann) did a better job this year than Scorsese, who didn't do a bad job at all, but I just didn't see anything in the movie that made me think he was great. My other problems come from something I don't really know how to explain but is reflected on some little things. For example, we all knew that Jude Law was in this movie playing Errol Flynn, but guess what? He's in it for only a two minutes scene (made just to show him) and then he's in the back in another scene. Willem Dafoe is also here for a one minute scene.
The movie is just full of shit I think, and Scorsese deserved the Oscar a few years ago for Gangs of New York (though I can't remember his competition right now) and not now for The Aviator, a not so good written Hollywood movie about Hollywood. Just give it to Leo and Cate.