Review the Mummy Joe Morgenstern Wall Street Journal

FILM REVIEW
Past JOE MORGENSTERN

A Flashy, Flawed 'Aviator':
Like Hughes'due south Spruce Goose,
Tale of Tycoon Flies, Almost

DiCaprio Can't Fill in the Blanks
In This Sanitized Biography;
'1000000 Dollar Infant' Is No KO
Dec 17, 2004; Page W1

Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, the fabulous industrialist, Hollywood playboy, motion-picture show tycoon, airline executive, obsessive-compulsive recluse and, yep, aviator who designed the Bandbox Goose, a giant flying boat that lifted off the water only once, in 1947, with Hughes at the controls. Like that eight-engine behemoth, this account of Hughes's life is spruced upwardly (his craziness sanitized to make him sympathetic), goosed up (with flashy techniques the manager favors), wooden-winged (though the affair flies, it doesn't soar), and remarkable to behold as it goes by. (The product was designed by Dante Ferretti, and photographed by Robert Richardson.) Watching the actors and gorgeous trappings is an adventure in cerebral dissonance. I didn't believe a single minute in most three hours, but enjoyed being there all the same.

Enjoyment and disbelief coexist quite happily in the razzle-dazzle of the early reels. Mr. Scorsese has brought his beloved of quondam-fashioned Hollywood pageantry to a big, newish-fashioned saga of a thwarted visionary. (It's his version of Francis Coppola's "Tucker: The Human and His Dream.") Howard Hughes produced and directed movies, starting at the age of 22, so movie love provides the director of "The Aviator," and its writer, John Logan, with a perfect access route to Hughes's varied and storied career. But movie love in this case too ways a production more concerned with theatricality than with realism or biographical truth.

When we first see Mr. DiCaprio'due south Howard Hughes as a babe-faced developed, the yr is 1927, and he's directing his first motion-picture show, the extravagant aviation epic "Hell'southward Angels." (Though the re-creation is terrific fun, no time is taken to suggest how the son of a Texas drill-scrap tycoon learned to direct, or to note that other directors worked on the film.) Adjacent, Howard is at the premiere, with flash bulbs exploding like grenades, prisoner of war! pow! pow!, and a bizarre Jean Harlow lookunalike at his side. And then Howard's life goes prisoner of war! pow! pow! He falls for Cate Blanchett'south Katharine Hepburn! (Who wouldn't?) He teaches Kate how to wing! (Beautiful sequence.) He buys TWA! (The guy's a gambler.) He breaks the world's speed record, so walks away from a crash landing in a beet field! ("Fastest man on earth," Hughes tells Hepburn when he gets dwelling house, tapping himself boyishly -- and charmingly -- on the chest.)

This romantic interlude gives "The Aviator" a counterpart of the uplift that Hughes would later engineer, quite literally, into Jane Russell's bra. (She was his ultrabuxom star in "The Outlaw.") Ms. Blanchett's portrayal isn't only an astonishing soundalike -- she seems to accept internalized all the rhythms as well as the timbre of Hepburn's vocalisation -- but an enchanting creation in its own right. Mr. DiCaprio'south initial jauntiness is entertaining likewise. His Howard comes on as a Gatsby with the souvenir of blunt gab and the passion of an Icarus for risky flying.

Yet a paradox shadows both performances. Cate Blanchett does what'south asked of her wonderfully well, but it'due south still a trick, just similar Jude Law's fleeting plough as Errol Flynn, or Kate Beckinsale's game impersonation of Ava Gardner. (Game merely pallid, beneath Ava'southward sensational clothes.) Leonardo DiCaprio brings an impressive fix of skills to his role, but they're the incorrect skills, because he's incorrect for the part. While he comes to wait like the existent-life Hughes as his character ages, he remains unconvincing as a man tortured by brain disease. It's equally if the brilliant imposter Mr. DiCaprio played in "Catch Me if You Can" had somehow snagged this office and was going through the motions cleverly, fifty-fifty though the full range of the hero's emotions was beyond him.

And beyond, or apart from, the movie's intentions. "The Aviator" bites off only a slice of Hughes's story, choosing to avert his unsavory sex life and crackpot politics, and catastrophe before his move to Las Vegas, where he descended into the depths of lone madness. That's off-white plenty: As Hepburn says hither, "Movies are movies, Howard, non life." Martin Scorsese's picture show gives us enough to munch on: elegant airplanes; a shattering crash; zestful music; Alec Baldwin'southward smoothen accept on Pan American'southward Juan Trippe; Alan Alda's unctuous, unprincipled Owen Brewster, the senator who went afterward Hughes on Trippe's behalf when TWA tried to suspension Pan Am's stranglehold on international routes.

Even so, movies try to simulate life, or enhance it, and this ane succeeds only partly. Its hero may be a visionary, simply he also displays alarming behaviors, and no i really talks almost them; they're just for display. His career in aviation lacks context: World War II comes and goes with hardly a mention. His insanity lacks scale: the spectacle is intriguing, rather than commanding. In the Pixar extravaganza, "The Incredibles," the tiny costume designer Edna Way, a takeoff on Hollywood'southward legendary Edith Head, laments: "I used to design for gods!" In "The Aviator," the stars playing gods -- and monsters -- seem all too mortal.

'Million Dollar Infant'

Clint Eastwood directed "Million Dollar Baby." Information technology's a battle film in which he plays a world-weary trainer, Frankie Dunn, who reluctantly takes on a female person fighter played past Hilary Swank. She'southward very strong in her role, dramatically and physically, while his performance reminded me of something Fine art Carney said a long time ago about his stirring piece of work in "The Belatedly Show." All he tried to practice in the part, Carney told me, was exist "correct." An former-fashioned notion, and a fine i, it epitomizes Mr. Eastwood's work here -- nothing showy, nothing disproportionate. Y'all can't even call his interim minimalist, since that would suggest artfulness. It's sufficientist -- just enough to give usa privileged glimpses of Frankie'due south good, guilt-ridden soul.

[Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman in 'Million Dollar Baby.']

Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman in '1000000 Dollar Baby.'

"Million Dollar Infant" is a mood piece punctuated past powerful action, with a plot turn I won't talk over, except to say that only a star of Clint Eastwood's stature could have gotten a major studio to proceed with the story's resolution, which is nothing if non forthright. For a while the dominant mood is muted melancholy. Though the world has passed Frankie by, he's establish refuge in a neighborhood gym, which he owns, and a cherished friend in Morgan Freeman's Scrap, an ex-boxer who'south no stranger to the source of Frankie'south guilt. Then Ms. Swank's Maggie Fitzgerald comes in off the street to change everyone's life -- an earnest, desperate refugee from Ozark poverty who thinks she tin can succeed in the professional band, fifty-fifty though she's no longer immature, provided someone is willing to teach her, and believe in her.

The motion-picture show, which was adapted by Paul Haggis from the "Rope Burns" stories of F.X. Toole, is also a love story -- Maggie takes the identify of Frankie's estranged girl. If some of this sounds predictable or pat, it'due south because "Million Dollar Babe" constitutes, in form if not ever in substance, a thoroughly conventional drama. It isn't the ballsy event existence hailed by admirers who insist, as they did last year with "Mystic River," on elevating Mr. Eastwood's directorial style from conventional to classical. I say this because his new flick, for which he wrote the graceful score, should be appreciated for what it is, non overpraised and and so seen as a disappointment. It is thoughtful, unfashionable, measured, mostly honest, sometimes impuissant or remote, often exciting, occasionally moving and eventually surprising. It's correct.

'The Sea Within'

God bless bully actors, and keen interim. Javier Bardém shows how it's washed in "The Body of water Inside," a Spanish-language characteristic, directed past Alejandro Amenábar, virtually Ramón Sampedro, a quadriplegic who was the starting time person in Spain to asking that his life exist ended by euthanasia. (His wish was granted after a 30-yr campaign.) One could contend that Mr. Bardém showed us everything about acting we could have wanted to know when he played the Cuban poet and novelist Reynaldo Arenas in "Before Night Falls." Merely "The Sea Inside" is different, since this time he can only act from the neck upward. And and then he does, to the point of updating half of an old theatrical joke that had John Gielgud as the earth's best histrion from the neck upward, and Laurence Olivier from the neck down.

That'due south not to make light of the hero's plight, though ane of the movie's many strengths is his self-ironic humour. Paralyzed every bit the consequence of a diving accident, Ramón can movement only his head, and movement those around him with his vox. Mr. Bardém's handsome confront, changed substantially just not essentially by excellent older-age makeup, is partly cached in his neck, while his normally rich, robust voice is reduced to a soft but urgent flow of linguistic communication that can be lilting, rueful, lyrical or ferocious. And those around him are both moved and moving: an ardent village woman played superbly by Lola Dueñas, a disabled-rights lawyer, with her ain rather contrived disability, played past Belén Rueda (whose beauty mustn't be held against her; she gives a marvelous functioning in what is, remarkably, her feature-film debut.) "The Sea Inside" has its share of contrivances, some more successful than others, simply eye phase is occupied by truth, and ascetic dazzler.

'Lemony Snicket's A Serial of Unfortunate Events'

Ane problem with "Lemony Snicket'south A Series of Unfortunate Events" stems from an unfortunate phenomenon that kids empathise very well. Grownups accept a habit of going on too long. Jim Carrey is the prime offender here. He's such an unseemly showoff that the movie keeps stopping in its tracks. Simply how, and why, should kids be expected to sympathize that their beloved Daniel Handler books have been damaged by gratuitous darkness, a harm that can't be undone past design? Rich Heinrichs'due south production design is incessantly inventive, a retro vision of Jules Verne via Terry Gilliam, just who was this glum movie fabricated for? Surely non young children in search of cheerful fun.

'Spanglish'

In "Spanglish," a social comedy by James L. Brooks, a practiced story about civilisation disharmonism and the immigrant experience lies cached beneath layers of Bel-Air blather and bilious bombast. Paz Vega is Flor, a beautiful Mexican mother, innocent of English language, who, with her beautiful, gifted daughter, enters California illegally and finds work keeping firm for a wealthy family. Adam Sandler plays the master of the house, John Clasky, a preposterously saintly wimp. Téa Leoni is Deborah Clasky, his fiendishly narcissistic wife. I've enjoyed Ms. Leoni's comic gifts in the past, and I'll bask them again, merely "Spanglish" asks her to play crazed, and she delivers with a performance of unremitting, crazymaking shrillness. In the molar of Deborah's mouth storms, all subtlety is blown away.

* * *

DVD TIP: It is time, again, to sing the praises of "Melvin and Howard" (1980), which I've recommended before, but non when Howard Hughes was the subject of a major picture show. Jonathan Demme'due south fragile fantasy is a minor movie, merely, equitably, a small classic. Paul Le Mat is Melvin Dummar, a small-boondocks goofball who comes upon Jason Robards's Howard Hughes, a scruffy vagrant, or and so it would seem, lying helpless in the desert. In one case you've seen this poetic Howard, all others are prosaic.

Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com