..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

The Aviator
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Miramax

The Aviator is no disaster. It has a few of the best flying sequences ever put on film. DiCaprio, with his clipped Texas accent and baby face, gives a tremendous performance covering a wide range of emotions. Ian Holm and Alan Alda are good for some laughs. And to see a director of Scorsese's skills working against his natural tendencies behind the camera is fascinating.

On the other hand. the story is dramatically incomplete, in both meanings. much of the movie's focus is on Hughes' descent into madness, which we experience in much the same way over and over and over again. when Hughes overcomes obstacles, he is hard to root for because the movie really doesn't explain how he overcomes them. cameos by Gwen Stefani and Willem Dafoe and an extended cameo by Kate Beckinsale are no less than painful (Dafoe's because it is so brief and odd to see a great actor so disconnected from the rest of the film). and in the end, the question of the night, as it has been with so many misses this year, is "what is the point?"

I don't want to get into too many details here, lest I spoil the experience for you. (Note to fellow journalists: Miramax did not invite me to see the film yesterday. but guild screenings are accessible and access this one I did.) But the film, after a brief prologue in his childhood, starts with Hughes in the first half of his 20s, directing Hell's Angels over a two year period at a then-mammoth cost of $3.8 million. And while much of this part of this film is compelling - the most compelling segment of the film - it is also indicative of problems that the rest of the film will have. We don't know anything about the company that Hughes owns, how his parents died, how he really feels about their passing, or even, in the end, that Hughes lost $1.5 million of his investment in the film.

One of Scorsese's traditional strengths is that he brings just enough backstory to his characters that we, as an audience, always understand their motives, for better or for worse. Here, we encounter giant hole after giant hole and are left to figure it out - or not - for ourselves. Are we really to believe that everything in Hughes' life, success and psychosis, was generated from one ill-fated bath? Of course not. But that's all we are really given. There has never been a clearer advertisement for anti-OCD meds.

The Katherine Hepburn relationship will be the most controversial among filmgoers, not because of content so much as Cate Blanchett's turn as The Great Kate. She grew on me after time and was at her best in the quiet moments between the two, but it will be interesting to see how people react to what is very, very difficult. bringing to life a beloved and incredibly familiar figure whose most familiar mannerisms came later in her life than the period this film covers.

Ah, if only the film could all be as glorious as the flying in the production of Hell's Angels and our first trip to the Coconut Grove. It is in those sequences that we see the movie that was expected to be nominated across the Oscar board. It is Hollywood, it is a man overcoming the system with smarts and relentlessness, it is often visually spectacular.

I'll get into the Oscar prognostications in the MCN column on Thursday. But this is not Scorsese's best work, if only because the theme of the film does not ever become fully clear. The tragedy of a great mind felled by mental illness often makes for great drama. But here, there is nothing to balance it against. There is not the great love of A Beautiful Mind. There is not the tragedy of destroyed belief and family as in Titus. It is not the fall of pride that we've seen in Scorsese's Raging Bull and Casino and GoodFellas. The disease is not progressive, but it hopscotches around Hughes' life in a way that keeps squeezing all the drama out just as it's building to a crescendo.

I look forward to seeing the film again soon and getting further into this conversation as people start seeing the film in greater numbers.

In the meantime, the awards season is only a Spanglish and a Million Dollar Baby away from my personal sense on completion. Bring 'em on!

- David Poland