Criminally robbed at this year’s Oscars (both the film and its director), The Aviator is something of a dazzling return to form for master filmmaker Martin Scorsese. You can positively feel Scorsese’s fired-up enthusiasm pouring out of every frame of this picture -- an ambitious, highly entertaining, visually breathtaking biopic on Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire oil tycoon and filmmaker. It's as if he was possessed by the manic, over-achieving ambitions of Hughes himself.

The film opens with Hughes, played with buzzing, magnetic energy by Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his best performances to date, trying to realise his dream aviation film project Hell’s Angels, the budget of which increasingly spirals out of control due to Hughes’ wildly perfectionist tendencies. These early sequences quickly portray Hughes as not only a man of dreams but someone with the vast financial resources to realise them, if at times recklessly, often to the dismay of his financial advisor (John C. Reilly). Scorsese shoots Hughes’ aerial filming with all the excitement of the dogfight sequences in the film itself, and the scope of both filmmakers’ undertaking dovetail each other wonderfully.

The rest of the film, which covers around 20 years of Hughes’ life, is equally stunningly realised -- perhaps showcasing Scorsese at his breeziest in some time -- detailing Hughes’ personal relationships with actresses Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett, who is a bit mannered at first but you’ll get used to it) and Ava Gardner (Kate Becksinsale), various film and plane projects (including the hulking behemoth The Hercules), while shedding some disturbing insight into the darker psychological component of his character. In addition to his money and innovations, Hughes was well-known for his obsessive-compulsive germophobic behaviour, which the film depicts unflinchingly in sequences such as Hughes carrying around his own personal bar of soap and savagely scrubbing his hands in restrooms, and suffering from a Tourettes-like speech impediment which causes him to uncontrollably repeat sentences.

Even though he always strikes me as being a tad too youthful still, DiCaprio is truly remarkable, conveying Hughes’ infectious drive and determination with fearless intensity. The great supporting cast includes Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe, the head of Pan Am whom Hughes locks horns with, and Alan Alda, the weaselly senator Owen who’s passing a bill in favour of Pan Am monopolising the airways.