Aviator, The

Variety Todd McCarthy

An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes.

The New Yorker David Denby

Brilliantly entertaining.

USA Today Mike Clark

Despite the film's sporadic lulls, both director and star are on full beam. The first and third hours of this 20th-century epic are as dazzling as big-scale movies get.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

If you didn't know that Martin Scorsese made The Aviator, the enthralling new adventure-biography of Howard Hughes, you might think it was the calling card of a neophyte visual genius.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is one of the year's best films.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The Aviator, though, if not prime Scorsese, is the closest thing in a long time to the old Scorsese. What a splendid year-end gift!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining.

Film Threat Chris Barsanti

This is Scorsese’s "Schindler's List", for better and for worse (mostly the better).

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

The result is an admirably bumpy ride of a biopic, a rare one that leaves you feeling not safe but bracingly unsettled.

Newsweek David Ansen

DiCaprio is astonishing.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

When it flies, it soars.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

So breathtaking is the action.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

A frenzied, sometimes overreaching biopic that paints in bold colors on a huge canvas, the film stars a never-better Leonardo DiCaprio--as perfectly cast here as he was miscast in "Gangs."

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Scorsese has crafted a rip-roaringly gorgeous-looking, beautifully acted biographical epic. But while firing on all cylinders, there's something oddly distancing about the picture.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Hugely entertaining and extravagantly empathetic.

Empire Simon Braund

DiCaprio shines, dispelling fears that he hasn’t the weight to carry such a complex, forceful role.

Slate David Edelstein

But Cate Blanchett ... ahhhh. She doesn't impersonate Katharine Hepburn, she channels her.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It’s bravura, classic Hollywood filmmaking, and you like to think that Hughes himself would have viewed it, if not appreciatively, then at least with a sense of kinship.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Martin Scorsese understands one character better than any other American director: the man who rises in the world to wealth or prominence without attaining what he wants most. That's why Howard Hughes is an ideal subject for this director.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Scorsese has crafted a luxurious entertainment that goes down like a flute of sparkling, silky champagne.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Scorsese's most accomplished, most disciplined movie since GoodFellas. His most gorgeous, too, with the peaches'n'strawberries'n'cream palette of early Technicolor films.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Running at about three hours, The Aviator is long, and the momentum occasionally flags. The depiction of Hughes's first mental breakdown feels a little obsessive-compulsive itself.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A flawed but entertaining (and perhaps informative) tale.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Scorsese, I think, is so invested in making The Aviator upbeat and rousing that the movie never quite reveals, the way that "Kinsey" or "Ray" or "A Beautiful Mind" or even a good E! True Hollywood Story do, how its hero's vision and his grand torments could be flip sides of the same temperament.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Has to be called one of the year's best movies. Credit goes partly to the built-in fascination of its subject and partly to its excellent cast.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

The movie equivalent of a lavish coffee-table book, a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood from one of its foremost students.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

As luscious as the filmmaking craft here is, it lacks the rude vitality, the unpredictability, the pure American craziness of the films that should have won him (Scorsese) the Oscar: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," and "GoodFellas."

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Lots can be said for The Aviator as entertainment, though not much for it as edification.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

A triumph of production design...As a character study, though, The Aviator is downright squeamish.

Time Richard Corliss

Despite its star's heroic efforts, The Aviator is a gorgeous jet, flying on automatic pilot.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

A fun and loving biopic

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Watching the actors and gorgeous trappings is an adventure in cognitive dissonance. I didn't believe a single minute in almost three hours, but enjoyed being there all the same.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

A lush, panoramic, dizzyingly portrait of the many-tentacled entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, though it may finally gain an Oscar for director Martin Scorsese, it is not his best work. The movie is disappointingly flat.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account of Hughes's early life.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

We may enjoy watching the spectacles, but we don't much care for, or even have a feeling for, the guy in the cockpit.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Brisk, glossy and gloriously art-directed, Scorsese's lavish biopic is a pop trifle, engaging but not compelling.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

This same film, shot for shot, line for line, could have been much more solid and engrossing, much farther up the Parnassian slope, with a better actor as Hughes.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

The Aviator could've been a "Raging Bull" brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short.