Leonardo DiCaprio has turned out to be, in our opinion, the best younger actor Hollywood has come up with in a very long time. DiCaprio and Johnny Depp are the best two actors of their generation, and they're far enough apart in age and appearance that I doubt they're often up for the same roles. Basically, they're like the modern-day Redford and Newman. If you haven't seen it, check out What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which stars both and got a 19-year-old Leo (deservedly) his first Oscar nomination.
I tried to hate DiCaprio, because of the whole teen-hearththrob, cover-of-Tiger-Beat thing, but there's a lot more to him than that.
We liked the picture, gory as it was and with about every other word starting with f.
"A Martin Scorcese Film" is about all the disclaimer you need for that.
DiCaprio was so great in The Aviator, the Howard Hughes bio, that we will take a chance on anything he is in.
DiCaprio carried that movie on his shoulders. It's hard enough to play something like OCD, but to show the internal struggle and the gradual worsening ... that's a performance with a lot of layers. But Leo still got a lot of scenes stolen by Cate Blanchett, who was absolutely perfect.
I have to say that Cate Blanchett distracted me because she was, at least initially, imitating Katherine Hepburn's mannerisms by exaggeration rather than more subtly. Less being better in this case. I did see Eating Gilbert Grape years ago and liked the off beat storyline. My son will watch pretty much anything and I see a lot of stuff when visiting that would not otherwise get a chance on my own home screen. The F word gets on my last nerve by it's overuse and obvious catering to the alpha element in the audience. I can handle it but there is always the thought that expanding their vocabulary, and maybe elevating their thinking some, with a wider variety of expressive words would be an opportunity for a creative writer looking to be different from the herd. On the plus side, maybe it is a compromise for not using religious profanity which seems rather rare, at least for the few movies we watch. I haven't seen any Johnny Depp movies lately, what do you recommend?