Director Martin Scorsese soars triumphantly close to the sun, and unlike Icarus, never falters in his flight. An epically scaled biography of Howard Hughes, the mad genius of airplanes, movies and womanizing, this is filmmaking on a grand, rare, often curiously poignant scale, featuring a stunning performance by Leonardo DeCaprio as one of the great American nut cases. In an era when the better American directors are making chamber pieces, Scorsese dares the symphonic, with deeply satisfying results.