Movie Review: **** The Aviator (2004)

Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) is really messed up.  At times he is able to control his mental illness, but his demons seem to come out again.  He is a genius and a money making machine; but sometimes genius gets him in trouble.  He also has drive.  He supplies planes for TWA, but eventually buys TWA.  He orers some new long distance planes, and wants to use them for flights to Europe, but the owner of Pan Am, Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) has the contract and a monopoly, and a senator, Senator Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) in his back pocket.  When he is brought before a senate hearing for misuse of public funds on airplane projects, he calls it the way he sees it, and informs the committee Trippe and Brewster work together and it appears the senator is influenced by Trippe due to money and donation.  Hughes in the end gets to move into Europe.  Managing his business affairs was Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly).

Hughes is also a womanizer with a fling with Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and a desire for Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale).  

Hughes was also a test pilot, and crashed a couple of planes, the second of which almost killed him and left him with PTSD and burn scars.

Very good biographical sketch of Howard Hughes.

Movie Review: **** Emma (1996)

This is the Jane Austen BBC, A&E movie, 1996, starring Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong.  In Jane Austen's way, it is a romantic comedy involving the British upper society.  It has Emma arranging marriages, and doing rather poorly except with regards to her governess.  She next sets up a young woman of questionable background with the vicar, and this turns our badly; although the vicar does propose to her, Emma.  It isn't until after her for her good neighbor confronts her bad behavior at a party, that she starts to realize she loves the neighbor, and when another suitor appears, she finds herself even more in love.  This movie has the Austen charm and is well done.  This version is better received than the feature version produced about the same time.   Kate Beckinsale is lovely in her role, and we all hate the vicar's wife, someone from outside the community who happens to have an inheritance but also has airs.