RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Neil Welch Marla Mabrey is a naive but beautiful virgin, one of many ingénues kept on the payroll by Howard Hughes in the hope of Hollywood stardom. There is mutual attraction between her and driver Frank - he is also hopeful of using the Hughes connection as a step up - but they are both scared of the warning that moving that attraction forward is grounds for dismissal.This set-up is made clear in the trailer. What happens from here onwards is that the film - written and directed by Warren Beatty - concentrates on Howard Hughes as he gets deeper and deeper into his squirrelly period, spending much of this 127 minute film in deep shadow or behind curtains. Since Beatty also plays Hughes, one comes to the conclusion that this is essentially a vanity project. It is also pretty dull.The trailer also leads you to believe it is a comedy. Despite some amusing moments, it isn't. So, it's neither a romance nor a comedy. In fact, it's far from clear exactly what sort of film it is other than a long and not-very-interesting one.There is a phenomenal cast, but most of them are given very little to do. Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich as the ostensible romantic leads are pleasing, but somewhat betrayed in that the movie isn't actually about them at all.The period production values are heavily in evidence, and Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is gorgeous.And you leave the cinema two hours later going "What was that all about, then?"

peterquennell Mostly not about the familiar tale of Howard Hughes, really more about the chaos that the super-rich too often rain on those dogged souls around them. Nice writing, great dialogue, a real roller-coaster. A situation is created in the first few minutes, and another at the one-hour mark, that are exceptionally well resolved in the last 15 minutes. That final arc, very cleverly plotted, with its perfect dialogue, every single word of it, and four slowly growing realizations, has had me watching it on the recorder half a dozen times. A small marvel. Great to see Alec Baldwin and Ed Harris in small parts and Matthew Broderick in a bigger part. I've seen all three repeatedly on Broadway in some of the funnier roles created - Broderick in The Foreigner was THE funniest I've seen, period. Also Taissa Farmiga, recently very funny on Broadway (with Ed Harris) and almost unrecognizable here.Thanks to Warren Beatty's kind writing, Alden Ehrenchreich and especially Lily Collins are the real stars of this movie.They have the most screen-time and some impressively funny scenes, sad scenes, confused scenes, angry and mistrustful scenes, and (surprise surprise) in-love scenes.Both have shown themselves wide-ranging previously in other roles. Alden Ehrenchreich really handled well the magic addressed against him in Beautiful Creatures.Lily Collins (daughter of Phil Collins) as a fiery princess acted Julia Roberts and Nathan Lane into the shade in Mirror Mirror - her training to become a dwarf warrior is another scene worth multiple re-watches.Her dark-eyed even look and confident voice and general lack of any fear have reminded some of a young Natalie Wood or Elizabeth Taylor. She would be so right if anyone ever makes another Ivanhoe. Especially a funny one.

Lee Eisenberg Without a doubt, Howard Hughes was one of the most eccentric and enigmatic figures of the 20th century. A billionaire who went into the movie business, he left his mark on a number of industries. Martin Scorsese focused on part of Hughes's career with "The Aviator". Now Warren Beatty does so with "Rules Don't Apply". This one looks at a relationship between one of Hughes's starlets and her driver in the 1950s. It's not a great movie, but infinitely better than Beatty's last movie, the crime against humanity "Town & Country" (which rivaled Woody Allen's worst movie "Everyone Says I Love You" in being an obnoxious fetishization of neurotic New Yorkers having affairs with each other).The only thing that drags this movie down is the appearance of two people: Steve Mnuchin (as a banker) and Louise Linton (as a potential starlet). They're now husband and wife. He's Treasury Secretary, while she Instagrammed a photo of herself and tagged the designers, and proceeded to make a let-them-eat-cake remark when a woman criticized her use of a government plane for travel (this was after she published a book purporting to tell of a year that she spent in Zambia, but the entire nation of Zambia disdained it as a promotion of the white savior trope).Anyway, it's a good movie otherwise. Aside from Beatty, it stars Lily Collins, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Candice Bergen, Dabney Coleman and Ed Harris. To put that another way, it stars Clyde Barrow, Snow White, Carolyn Burnham, Capt. Willard, Jack Ryan, Ferris Bueller, Murphy Brown, a creepy boss and Jackson Pollock.

Dave Archer Rules Don't Apply, written, directed, starring and probably catered by Warren Beatty, is an odd mix of actual events focused on Howard Hughes (played by Beatty) and his various business dealings, and a cast of fictional characters that surround him. Real-life elements include his diminishing mental capacity, the Spruce Goose, his financial problems and more. The fictional elements involve a contract actress (Lily Collins – Phil's daughter) her driver (Alden Ehrenreich), and his boss (Matthew Broderick.)The cast is uniformly excellent and in many cases, wasted. The movie has more cameos – some lasting less than a minute – than any movie in recent memory, and features Paul Sorvino, Candice Bergen, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Oliver Platt, Alec Baldwin, Dabney Coleman, Steve Coogan and many, many more. On the other hand, the movie does a better job of faithfully recreating the late-50s and early-60s than any movie I've seen.If Howard Hughes, the time period, topic or cast interest you, wait for the DVD. Otherwise, skip this one.