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.

John Wayne Movie Review: ***^Rooster Cogburn

Rooster Cogburn is a sequel to True Grit and based on the same character developed by Charles Portis in the novel True Grit.   This movie stars John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn as an unlikely pair Rooster Cogburn a U.S. Marshall and Eula, a religious zealot whose father is murdered by outlaws.  She recruits Cogburn to go after her father's killers while he is trying to recover nitroglycerin from some bank robbers; who are the same people.  Cogburn hopes to drop off the lady, and her young friend, Wolf, throughout the struggle, but never gets the chance.  Turns out they prove helpful.  Wolf scatters the outlaws horses and Eula is handy with a gun.  

Christmas Movie Reviews: ***^One Christmas

***^One Christmas This is a Truman Capote story which was made into a TV movie in 1994.  It features  Henry Winkler as Buddy's (T.J. Lowther) father, Swoosie Kurtz as father's girlfriend and Katharine Hepburn as the girlfriends influential aunt, Cornelia Beaumont.  Buddy is visiting his father, who he doesn't know very well.  He was  living with Aunt Sook in Alabama.  Father lives in New Orleans.  Father is a con artist, manipulating women to give him money for his investments.  He is currently investing in a plane scheduled to be in a race.  He is sure of winning, until the engine blows.  He has to find investors to pay for a new engine, and gets one of faulty history.  Swoosie is a major investor, over the objection of her aunt.  I liked this  movie because it showed the growth of the characters.  They all seem to mature.  Buddy learns to love his father, although he prefers Alabama.  His father learns to be more honest.  Swoosie learns to stand for herself and make her own decisions and Miss Beaumont learns to open up more in her old age.  This movie is a bit slow, but I mildly recommend it.