I’ve never seen *Titanic *all the way thru, but what bits and pieces I’ve seen have not compelled me to watch it.
I also don’t understand all the love for Humphrey Bogart - his movies strike me as contrived and the acting seems either stiff or over-the-top. Maybe I just don’t like movies of that period.
I doubt I could name a Best Movie Ever Made - I like different ones for different reasons. But I especially hate movies based on books or actual events that change the essence of the story for purely commercial reasons.
Good movie overall? Certainly. I never got the hate for it: it’s a fine, old-fashioned romantic disaster film, the best of that particular subgenre, certainly.
I never saw Titanic, but I was talking to a friend who had. Based on the commercials, I was able to recount the entire plot including guessing that despite DiCaprio’s humble origins, he proved himself to be the truly nobleman when he sacrificed himself to save the girl. It’s just pap for the lowbrows who mistake spectacle for story.
Titanic was a technically proficient film with trite dialogue, flat characters, and a pretty interesting last hour, although it had plenty of parts that just dragged. Not by any means the best written, designed, acted, or edited film even of the year it came out. Just the biggest spectacle. Not even the best version of the tragedy.
Not even going to argue what the best movie ever made was since that would take too long to both decide, starting with establishing criteria, and would still be filtered through my subjective opinion. The list of movies made within 5 years of Titanic that I think are far superior just technically would be pretty long as it is.
I still don’t understand how Leo Decaprio and the gal , after bring in icy water up to their necks, appear on deck with dry clothing!
Yes, the special effects were nice…but the earlier versions of the story were in some ways better. As I said in “How To Tell if a Movie Sucks”-I knew what was going to happen after the first 5 minutes.
I never saw Casablanca, but I’m sure it’s boring, being all black and white and just a bunch of yammering for 2 hours. Plus a sappy love story. Right? (See, I can review movies I’ve never seen also!)
On a more serious note, I very much liked Titanic. Great movie in all sorts of aspects. But it’s not the best movie ever made.
The movie that affected me the most, call it “my favorite movie of all time” is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It effected a paradigm shift in me and opened up a world I never knew even existed. One that I enjoy very much and has enriched my life to no end.
Perhaps the most enjoyable movie I’ve seen, which I watch over and over and over, is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Sometimes I just skip to Tuco’s run through the graveyard and watch that.
But the best mover ever, in terms of pacing, character, message, emotional impact, etc. etc., has got to be Kurosawa’s Ikiru. That is a perfect film.
“Titanic” is a great movie. But there are many better ones. Of the ones mentioned in this thread alone, I’d put these above it (and that’s omitting a number that I just haven’t seen):
But dialogue, music, and character are very important parts of a film for me. “Titanic” excels at visuals and storytelling 101, both of which are (a) more difficult than most filmgoers realize and (b) emblematic of Cameron’s strengths as a director (notably, both are similarly defining characteristics of “Avatar”). But it also has some awful dialogue, a saccharine score featuring one of the worst “Best Songs” of all time, serious pacing issues, and a shoehorned-in bad guy made of cardboard.
(Also, if I were to add a film to the list, it’d be “The Prestige.” IMO Nolan’s best film, and possibly his only great film.)
(Edit: And if we want to add another super-long epic, I’d nominate Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy way before I got to “Titanic.”)
I wouldn’t consider “Titanic” to be anywhere within the 100 best movies in history.
In fact, I wouldn’t consider “Titanic” to be the best movie about the “Titanic”. That place belongs to “A Night to Remember”, filmed in 1958, that leaves Cameron’s “Titanic” eating dust in spite of Cameron’s work having a budget many many times bigger (even taking inflation into account) and 40 years’ development when it comes to special effects.
“A Night to Remember” has better acting, tauter story-telling, and (most important) keeps much closer to the real story of what happened that night. Just the fact that “A Night to Remember” mentions and shows the “Californian” makes it a better film, already.
The only problem is that (as it was assumed until then) it portrays the Titanic sinking in one piece – although it seems that, in fact, the ship may have broken in two underwater, so even that would not be that much of a difference.
When it comes to “the best movie of all times”, there are a few that jostle in my mind for that place. “2001”, “Dr. Strangelove” and “Clockwork Orange” by Kubrick, “Bienvenido Mr. Marshall” and “El Verdugo” by Berlanga, and a few others.
But “Titanic” is not there, at all.
And when I watched “Titanic” in the theatres I was actually moved at times … But looking back to the movie afterwards, I could see its many, many flaws.
I just about pissed myself laughing when I first saw it as an 8yo, and 33 years later it’s still the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. Absolute genius from start to finish.
Am I being whooshed or can it truly be that nobody who is posting a ‘Best Movie of All Time’ nominee has ever seen KING RALPH? Because if you had, the only running would be for second place. (Arguably Camille Coduri’s best pre Doctor Who performance, stronger and more nuanced even than her work in Nuns on the Run, and Ralph’s abdication speech… try and tell me you didn’t cry.)
As for Titanic, saw it three times in the theater, have probably watched it a half dozen times since and have probably watched bits and pieces of the sinking scenes at least twice that when it’s on TV. It’s probably not on my Top 10 but extremely well done, and while the story isn’t exactly complex it did a good job of making colossal special effects serve the story rather than just filling the screen with “look what we can do! Now cue explosions and a kiss and love and a bit with a dog”! tripe. I give it a strong A.
I have trouble sitting through any movie twice with a few exceptions that I stumble across in the middle of the night while channel surfing. My girlfriend has watched titanic well into the hundreds of times by now. She has watched it as many as 5 times in one day, I just don’t get it.
**Fact: Titanic is the Best Movie Ever Made or Ever Will Be Made. Discuss.
**
A good movie, yes. I’ll even go as far as a very good movie. But not the best ever. There are many movies that I think are better, based on aesthetics or emotional response. In no particular order, here are the first five that came to mind:
The Maltese Falcon
A League of Their Own
Casablanca
Big Fish
Lincoln
You want a nightmare movie experience? Try being yelled at from the screen by several righteously indignant Jim Crow era suddenly empowered black women who chase you through the red clay farms of Georgia and modern day streets making you the scapegoat for the racism, domestic abuse, and a myriad of other social injustices they’d had to endure, and you have no idea if you’ll ever get away.
I’m talking of course about the plot of the movie mashup Sega Genesis game The Color Purple Rose of Cairo.
