SYNOPSIS

A young man takes a job working for Howard Hughes and gets sucked into the eccentric tycoon's world, but runs the risk of clashing with his new boss when he falls in love with an actress.

CINDIE SAYS:

Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply (2016) is a film brimming with ambition, nostalgia, and the allure of old Hollywood. It marks Beatty’s long-awaited return to directing—his first since Bulworth (1998)—and his decades-in-the-making portrayal of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. The film also features an impressive ensemble cast, including Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, and Candice Bergen, many of whom have only brief but memorable appearances.

Beatty had been fascinated by Howard Hughes for decades and had considered making a Hughes film as early as the 1970s. Unlike Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004), which focused on Hughes’ early triumphs, Rules Don’t Apply explores his later years, when his reclusive behavior and paranoia had fully taken hold. Beatty’s portrayal is compelling—he plays Hughes as both a genius and a tragic, self-destructive figure, a man whose wealth isolates him from real human connection.