I had two problems with The Aviator (I own it on DVD, though, and I'm quite fond of the cinematography, the seamless use of CG, and how Martin Scorsese fetishizes the golden age of the movies - so much so that I wish he'd do another picture focusing on the movie business of this period and have a real director as his protagonist - someone like Vincente Minnelli, maybe). My biggest problem with the movie is the "straight biopic" nature of the movie. Maybe my expectations had been raised too high by his previous attempt at a biographical picture, Raging Bull, but the structure of The Aviator is way too by-the-numbers for me: Daring young man rises to the top of his chosen profession(s), has a hard fall, and then hunkers down and raises himself right back up again. Added to this was my second problem with the movie, which is that we don't get a real sense of Howard Hughes' internal life...how is it that he comes up with his ideas? Why does he want to be a movie mogul? Is it just the sex-with-starlets part that interests him? Why is he so passionate about flying airplanes? What made him decide to be an aviator in the first place? I wanted to get a sense of his internal life, including perhaps what it was that drove him nuts (Scorsese went with the straight OCD answer, though biographers had a buttload of other theories about why Hughes behaved the way he did).
DiCaprio's performance was great, though his voice was way too thin and reedy to be believable as an older Hughes, and he still had that babyface thing going on (which finally seems to be going away as he gets older). Cinematography, as previously stated, is gorgeous, especially the nightclub sequences, the use of the two-color process to imitate the look of early color films, etc., etc.
