THE AVIATOR Leonardo DiCaprio as billionaire movie mogul/aviation whiz Howard Hughes.

Reality Check The movie focuses on Hughes' midlife love affairs with aviation and actresses, but skips over other important parts — like how he started his Hollywood career at 19 and ended his life a neat-freak hermit, with bizarrely long toenails. Oh, and one other thing — Ava Gardner makes an appearance in the movie about seven years before Hughes met her.

Why the Changes? ''I'm a dramatist, not a historian,'' says screenwriter John Logan. ''Historical verisimilitude is not my main reason for working on the movie. Any effort to condense a man's life into two and a half hours will necessitate dramatic allowances.''

KINSEY Liam Neeson plays 1940s sex researcher Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey.

Reality Check A lot of Kinsey's actual life is crammed into the film, but one major event is missing: the death of his first child at age 4. Also, some critics have complained that what is revealed in the movie (extramarital affairs, interviewing pedophiles, making sex films) is presented only in the most positive way, as a search for scientific truth.

Why the Changes? ''There was never any chance of me engaging in pure hero worship with Kinsey — he was too complicated,'' says writer-director Bill Condon. ''I thought it was important to present him the way he was — flawed but sympathetic. The child dying would have made Kinsey warmer and fuzzier, but it didn't speak to what I was interested in.''

Originally posted Dec 13, 2004 Published in issue #797 Dec 17, 2004 Order article reprints
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