The Aviator

Cate Blanchett is uncannily like her namesake, Kate Hepburn, in this big film. At one point in the course of film I thought I was watching Hepburn just as she was in African Queen. Here again Hepburn is trying to organise her male co-star albeit replacing Tracey for DeCaprio. Leonardo DeCaprio plays Howard Hughes and the performance is reminiscent of his early Gilbert Grape role as Arnie Grape when he was just a kid. DeCaprio was so realistic as the autistic troublemaker in Gilbert Grape that I wondered if they had got an actual autistic actor to play the part - first time I had seen him in a film. The link between the young and older DeCaprio roles is especially strong when the aviator slips into his distressing OCD repetitions. Try saying "It’s the way of the future" 500 times and you will get a flavour of Howard Hughes' obsessive problem. The film covers just part of Howard Hughes career ranging from film-making and his parallel career as designer of aircraft from the ‘spruce goose’ to spy planes. A strange genius indeed - it's as if Steven Spielberg was also an incredibly successful part time rocket scientist. There’s an excellent sequence covering senate hearings after the war regarding the monies spent on government contracts for aircraft that didn’t make it off the drawing board before hostilities ended in 1945. (Alan Alda deserves his Oscar nomination as the senator who is a pawn of Pan Am). The TWA - Pan Am rivalry is perhaps reminiscent of RyanAir and Aer Lingus today or maybe even RyanAir versus all the rest. Pan Am is now gone. The film's story ends well before the fascinating Glomar Explorer episode. This was a custom ship built by Hughes supposedly to mine manganese nodules from the sea floor but in reality it was participating in the CIA’s Project Jennifer recovering a sunken Russian sub carrying ballistic missiles.

Man on Fire

Denzel Washington drinks in this film. Perhaps it was this fact combined with a striking physical resemblance that unfortunately made me think Paul McGrath at various points watching him on screen. He plays Creasy who is the eponymous ‘Man on Fire’. Creasy has a secret that is revealed slowly over the course of the film. His darkness is juxtaposed with the bright and cheery youngster Pita (played by the extraordinary 10-year old Dakota Fanning who lights up the screen). He is hired to protect her during a wave of kidnapping that sweeps through Mexico City. You guessed it - in spite of himself he grows fond of the youngster just before she is kidnapped. His dark secret is then revealed in all its horror. An excellent film in my book (but beware not for the squeamish and the DVD/video does have an 18 Cert).

The Terminal

Everyone has heard of the man stranded in Charles De Gaul Airport. For some reason – perhaps the ‘Freedom Fries’ climate prevailing in the USA - Spielberg did not set the movie in France and the story is translocated to an unnamed New York Airport. Tom Hanks becomes Viktor Navorski a man from a mythical Eastern European country that becomes embroiled in a military coup while he is in flight and becomes stateless as a result. Stuck in the transit lounge, the story concerns his battle of wits against the airport authorities and specifically Stanley Tucci who is determined not to let Hank’s character spoil his promotion to airport security chief bottlewasher. Backed up by a manic set of airport staff, who inevitably befriend him, he wages a gentle war against Tucci and sets out to win the heart of the pretty girl. The pretty girl is Catherine Zeta Jones - the film's love interest. In spite of the fact that she admits to being 39 years old in the course of the movie she looks every bit as young as she did back in the days when she played a rustic in The Darling Buds of May as David Jason’s eldest daughter. All in all a thumbs up for this very pleasant offering from Spielberg. (DVD/Video)