Rating: Summary: Big Fan of James Cameron Review: I've seen every Cameron film, from the thumbs down Pirahna 2: The Spawning. I have to say, the great filmmaker made his name and talent known with The Terminator. But after 15 years, the one movie that stands out today is Titanic... and rightly so. It's James Cameron's masterpiece. From every angle to every special effect, from the "cheesy" dialogue to the powerful moments....it's something Cameron might not be able to dublicate.It's the Lawrence of Arabia to David Lean. The Schindler's List to Steven Spielberg. The Citizen Kane to Orson Welles. Bravo! Bravo Cameron
Rating: Summary: It's the emotion that does it for me Review: I intentionally avoided seeing this when it first came out beause of all the hype. And I doubly avoided seeing it when it won all those academy awards. As a Titanic fanatic for more than thirty years, reading and whatever I could about the great ship, even teaching it in high school, I was sure it would disappoint me. Then, one night, on a whim, I decided to rent it with my wife. I have to admit I was blown away. It gripped me from the first moment... and never let me go. I was disturbed I reacted so emotionally to the movie. I dislike Leo (something about him just irks me) and didn't want to admit I was sentimental about something he was in that was so hyped and popular. But I couldn't deny the way I reacted. About a year later I rewatched Titanic for the first time since that original experience and it got me again. Damn. I must be a sentimental fool. But what can I say? Shoot me. That's the way I reacted. Now, in the retrospect of time, I think I can identify, for myself at least, some of the movie's strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of the movie are: 1) special effects, 2) musical score (I purchased the sountrack and played it in my car regularly for a year till I became pretty much sick of it), 3) fascinating historical setting extremely well recreated 4) epic feel 5) some really good supporting performances 6) and, yes, the love story (I know this is where I'll lose some people) The weaknesses are: 1) Some stilted dialogue 2) some stilted acting of stilted dialogue 3) Leo's arrogance (sometimes appropriate, admittedly, but sometimes nauseating) 4) hype surrounding the movie It is my opinion now, given the perspective of time, that if viewed in a vacuum without the hype and expectation (if that's possible) it's a good movie, even a darn good movie, that can be moving. Heck, seeing the Titanic in computer graphic flesh alone would have been enough for me. And the music is literally out of this world. But even the love story, if you let your guard down, can work. And, believe me, I'm no Leo fan. Still, when he sinks away into oblivion, or when he and Rose are reunited in her dream/afterlife vision at the very end, something touches me and gets my emotional juices going. Call me a fool. An idiot. Love -- lost and otherwise -- tends to make idiots of people. Here's to having more such idiocy in our lives!
Rating: Summary: The Movie Itself deserves praise, not exactly the DVD Review: Cameron gave us an old-style classic using the most money any production agency has ever put up, and worked tirelessly to be perfect. He pulls off the task wonderfully. Like GONE WITH THE WIND and CASABLANCA, TITANIC sets a beautiful human story against a cataclysmic backdrop to touch of universal emotions and timeless grace. Many people have the right to compare this version of Titanic and her journey into the abyss to others in the past. But the tale of Rose and Jack are more than just a typical Hollywood romance today. They've become unforgettable characters (like, say for example Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, or Rick and whats her face). I'm giving my praise for Cameron's masterpiece, not the DVD which has great picture quality but not enough features.
Rating: Summary: After all the Hype, It Really is a Classic! Review: As I write this brief review, it is four years since "Titanic" came out, and there have been many Big Movies since then. Now that the hype has died down, it's time for a calm assessment of James Cameron's film. It really is a classic, comparable--as the Amazon reviewer Jeff Shannon said--to "Gone With the Wind." Indeed, there are significant parallels between the two. The most visually emotional scene in "Gone With the Wind" was the receding wide-angle camera shot of the dead and wounded soldiers. In "Titanic," it is the unforgettable shot, not much above eye-level, of the dead victims of hyperthermia, their heads bobbing in the cold Atlantic. Images like these become icons in one's personal memory--that with the beauty and grandeur of this world there are stark images of mass death to remind us of human follies like civil wars or ships that cut back on safety features or lifeboats. To his great credit, Director Cameron did not play "Can you top this?" with "Gone With the Wind," he played "Can I match this and do it in a different way?" But he shows that he is a student of many other movies. Reviewers have cited the "Romeo and Juliet" aspects of the romantic story, but I don't know if anyone has mentioned Cameron's considerable borrowing from that great Charles Boyer-Jean Arthur film of 1937, "History is Made at Night." No matter; you can see and enjoy both films without feeling that either detracts from the other. A true "homage" can be like that. Many viewers might say that "Gone With the Wind" and "Titanic" are epic love stories, and they of course are right, but I see the films as epics with love stories attached. Even within the love stories themselves, they are less about romance than they are about turning points in the lives of the heroines. It was not Clark Gable that shaked Janet Leigh out of her Southern complacency; it was the civil war. Similarly, it was the peril of a sinking ship that sent Kate Winslet back to try to save Leonardo DiCaprio in the hold even though, at that moment, he appeared to her to be an opportunist and a jewel thief. Perhaps the most important factor in the success of both "Gone With the Wind" and "Titanic" is that the epic story is intrinsic to the love story, and the love story is intrinsic to the epic. This is not easy to do, as "Pearl Harbor"-despite its great special effects--amply confirms. For all its borrowings, "Titanic" has a moment, at the very end, that has never been tried before in the history of the movies and probably will never be repeated. Just when you think the picture is over, and you see the remains of the Titanic as it appears today at the bottom of the ocean, the camera takes you back into the ship and back in time and you proceed into the grand ballroom where all the characters in the fictional part of the movie are assembled. And then you find that it is not you who is walking up the grand stairway, but rather it is Kate Winslet, and at the top is Leonardo DiCaprio in his street clothes as we remember him. They kiss and everyone applauds. What James Cameron has given us in this final moment is nothing other than a Curtain Call. It gives us the feeling, for once in the movies, akin to seeing the end of great play in the theatre. It tells us of reality on two levels: the historical reality of the drama we have just seen, and the present reality of actors who have done some good work for us in telling us the story of that drama.
Rating: Summary: great movie. a classic Review: In about ten years after all the hype and ferver around its release is over and forgotten, people are going to go back and watch this again and realize how mistaken they were in saying it was bad. Not that any of the critics (people who actually know movies and know what they are talking about) gave it bad reviews, in fact they gave it great reviews, and rightly so. Everything about this movie is great besides somes occasionally silly dialougue, but hey, these two characters (Winslet and DiCaprio) are supposed to be young, sometimes young people don't use the most sophisticated dialouge.
Rating: Summary: I'm shocked by some reviews Review: I've never understood why some small minds need for a film to be so overtly self-conscious. It's simply a great story. Every writer of great fiction I am familiar with laughed at so much analysis by people too small to write for themselves. Fate hands itself to great and small, no matter what they think about it. The two characters who know that are the only ones really living. There's your heavy idea. Happy now? Oh, wait, you're so smart the movie needs to beat it's ideas into you with a hammer or it sucks. Over and again it needs to first revel in it's own importance, harping on how important it is with ideas. This one doesn't.
Rating: Summary: Well Deserved Classic Review: Titanic. The ultimate movie. Winner of a lot of Academy Awards and who knows what else. I'm one of those people who thinks that the movie, the cast, and the crew got deserved all that it got. Everyone knows the plot, so I'm going to skip that. The acting is astounding. All of the performances are worthy, and are given with heart. Kate Winslet could not have, in any way, played her character any better. She was astounding, and so is her beauty. Leonardo DiCaprio was also good, but some of his dialogue seemed dull. But that didn't slow down any of the movie, nor did it really damage his performance. Billy Zane did well as the over-possessive poor excuse for a man. You really hated this man from the first shot of him in the movie. Gloria Stuart was awesome, and gave a little bit of humor to the movie. The rest of the supporting cast were wonderful, and I can't go without mentioning Kathy Bates. Her character, Molly, was the most lovable woman ever to grace the big screen, but that's just my opinion on that. Since I really don't know much about the directing elements of a film, I can't really comment on it, but I do know that scenes were well organized and the moods were set just right. The characters were introduced very approachingly, and never really focused on one character while the introductions were occurring. We were set up perfectly to know who we were going to be watching. When the sinking began, the movie took a faster pace, and did it well. All the while, focusing on Rose and Jack's love for each other. Titanic has gone down as classic, and certainly does live up to that standard.
Rating: Summary: Lets see Review: i personally like the movie, the special effect and the human drama made for a powerful combination when watching it in the theater. i saw it twice in theater and eventually bought the dvd. if you dont know the story by now you should... however on the off chance that you havent seen it, i recommend the vhs because the dvd has hardly any special features. just a few trailers. especially considering how much media coverage the film got when it first came out. if they had put a few more special features than it would be 5 stars
Rating: Summary: Yuck Review: I really disliked this movie - poor acting and story. Of course the academy would choose this film best picture for '97, all the 3-hour long "epics" win best picture, even if they're terrible, like this one. The film is really slow moving and actually quite depressing during the last hour. And how on earth did this movie pass with a PG-13 rating???? There's lots of explicit nudity, violence and language. Forget this film - it's just hype.
Rating: Summary: Titanic? No, more like miniscule. Review: So this is the movie that garnered so much praise and worship. Obviously this was not for the dialogue, as most of that is hackneyed phraseology suitable to be placed inside fortune cookies. The plot is just as trite (for those of you not historically inclined, the boat DOES sink in the end). The actors are interesting, especially Leonardo DiCaprio's uncanny and disturbing resemblance to a pre-pubescent girl. Amidst all the clouds, there are only two moments that can possibly qualify as some silver lining. First is when Kate Winslet is gratuitously naked. However the brief respite brought by such hardcore nudity is lost in the rest of the miasma when one realizes that she disrobes so Leo can draw her. A college-age male who sees a naked woman and thinks "I have got to draw this"? Obviously the writers passed their childhood in a hormone-free state, for while the pencil IS a phallic symbol, there is nothing like the real thing for most young males. The second positive scene is when a man leaps from the top of the ship as it is sinking and caroms off the propeller. He makes a comical noise, and it is funny to watch him spin into the water. However, such brief levity cannot counterbalance the rest of the movie, which is an overlong, overindulgent, sappy excuse for cinema. However, all is not lost. If you want to cleanse yourself with a great movie, check out the VHS title WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK which will set your Titanic-darkened world afire. A hero named Skip Banacheck, a psycho killer who appears to be the ghost of a recently executed biker gang leader, mountains of hair held in place by oceans of hairspray, and the immortal pickup line "You want to get naked?" followed by its sole competitor "You want to get sloppy." All this takes place against the nonstop debauchery of spring break in South Florida. This cinema gem is waiting for those numbed by such cliched collages of crud as Titanic. Forget Leonardo, watch John Saxon!!!!!!!!!!
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