Flutterby™! : The Aviator

Went out last night and saw the perfect Valentine's Day date movie: The Aviator. Think The Wall, but with airplanes.

Overall, I liked it. The movie captured a struggle with obsessive compulsive behavior beautifully, and, for all that the first half screamed "Oh look, there's Jack Dawson flying airplanes", I thought that once he was allowed to act, rather than just look pretty, Leonardo DiCaprio was amazing at getting inside the behavior of someone who knows he's going crazy, but has to transcend that to fulfil his passion.

Martin Scorcese on the other hand, needs to get some new camera moves. That shit worked well in The Age of Innocence(and didn't work in The Color of Money), but about the umpteenth time we see the "spiral staircase" move around the airplanes, it becomes monstrously distracting. In fact, one of the previews was for Kingdom of Heaven, which looks awful, but my reaction was "Oh, look, Ridley Scott did a Gladiator remake". Scorcese is a better director than Scott, but this movie very clearly showed that Scorcese never really loved aviation and airplanes, and that visually he's essentially a one-trick pony.

And it was cool, in this administration of drafting legislation to help specific companies and lobbyists, to have the defeat of such evil be a pivotal moment. Alan Alda played the corruption well, although we were still aware that it was Alda playing a role (luckily, not Hawkeye Pierce).

Enjoyed it, didn't notice its length.