There’s no denying that the special effects are stunning. The various parts of this grandiose ship crunching, buckling, and breaking; the inescapable water pushing in. And that scene where the rowboat is searching for survivors among all those floating bodies is haunting. Cameron expressed the scope of the tragedy of all those lives lost very well and that’s why it’s one of the best disaster movies in history.
The romance story was the weak part of the movie: though heart-achingly moving, it was too cliche, too one-dimensional.
I don’t really think there is such thing as a “best” movie of all time. It’s too subjective to people’s individual tastes. I think I’d nominate Psycho because I love horror movies, but there are others who would want to choose something more cheerful and uplifting, and they’re not wrong to prefer more cheerful and uplifting movies over Psycho.
Psycho was damn good. It suffers, today, for the lecture at the end. It might have worked then, but it’s clunky today. That’s a minor flaw, but when you’re in such a tight competition as this, even minor flaws can knock you out of first place.
It’s impossible to meaningfully claim that one film is “the best movie” except in a very limited sense. If the metric is simply “I enjoyed watching X more than Z,” fine, but that doesn’t really address “best.”
Try comparing “Gummo” with “A Shark’s Tale” in a useful way. I’ll wait.
Titanic? Pah! Pure Bollywood kitsch, manufactured in Hollywood. The only reason why Jack and Rose do not run around trees singing love songs is because the producers could not find a credible way of putting trees in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
My best movies are:
Best drama: “Das Leben der andern” (The lives of others).
Best romance: “Der krieger und die kaiserin” (The princess and the warrior).
Best overall : Metropolis.
Most “cultiest” (is the a word) of all the cult movies: Star wars.
Obviously, Star wars is the only one which I can watch more than once – for the others, a single viewing of each has left a lasting impression.
No “best movie” discussion is complete without the mention of Spaced Invaders. Spaced Invaders is awesome and I am willing to fight, via a surrogate, anyone who says otherwise.
I would argue that anybody who has seen anything over a 1,000 times probably is not qualified to judge the quality of it. Too much infatuation involved to be able to have anything like a balanced view. And probably no way to argue them out of their view either.
That said, I always thought the movie made three mistakes, or at least could have been even better by doing three things.
They show that a number of paintings of at the time contemporary, now famous artists are in the cabin. Once they know about those, they should have had them recover them. Lost masters. Almost as good as a diamond. Hey, it’s a movie. They could have come up with a story for why they didn’t deteriorate.
After having told her story, instead of having the old lady dump the diamond in the drink, they have the Brock character (Bill Paxton) take her down in the sub for a live look at the boat. While on the bottom, in the confines of the sub while staring at the wreck, she tells him she might know where the diamond is at. After some astonishment and excitement on Brock’s part about just where it is, she pulls it out and hands it to him saying something like “It’s right here. Looks like you found it after all”.
At the end of her story, Rose should have said that even though she only spent the one night with Jack, it turns out she got pregnant. Her granddaughter who was accompanying her would then know that she had just heard the story of her true grandfather.
Having broke the curse of the diamond and cleansed her history to her granddaughter, then she could go take a dive off the back of the boat and feed the fishes.
So some moist wench goes down on the hero and then goes down with all hands, and we’re supposed to cheer? This damp tart gets us all hot and bothered and we don’t even get to see her naked, but we’re supposed be all gooey sentimental about her tragic death? And don’t even get me started on the stars who were in the movie.
I agree. It’s weird. You not only already know what’s going to happen, but, by that point, you know the movie by heart and can just play it in your head. Somewhere along the line you should have started noticing all the flaws and should start getting sick of it.
And because that appears to be how you define the best movie of all time, I can’t hope to compete, as there’s no movie good enough for that type of treatment, and, even if there was, there’s no point in trying to convince you that your movie isn’t great, since you are clearly not rational about it.
I did just watch the Dark Knight recently, and it was pretty good, if a bit schlocky (and Bruce being less believable than Batman). And that’s a movie I consider pretty good. I can’t imagine seeing a film and not seeing its flaws.
Not really. I just do something else. Life is too short to waste time doing the same things over and over. There’s value in watching a movie a second time, once you know what’s going to happen, and then there’s only value once you don’t really remember what happened.
Note, I don’t see five or six times over a lifetime as that big a deal, but you say you watch them every year, and that seems overkill.
Life is too short to waste time on watching crap you never wanted to see in the first place and wish you didn’t once you did. I stick with the tried and true model. There are a number of movies that I like but they are only a very small percentage of the total ones made especially among the current crop (meaning the last 10 years or so). I only own about 12 movies and I would always prefer to watch one of those again rather than picking something at random at a theater or even flipping channels on the TV. I know what I like when I see it however and I will watch it over and over until the media is destroyed and then I will buy it again.
Some others that infinitely re-watchable to me are:
Casablanca
Gone With the Wind
Airplane!
There’s Something About Mary
I have seen all of those dozens if not hundreds of times a piece and they stand up quite well to repeated viewings that mature over time like a fine Bordeaux. After you hit a plateau and become one with the work, it is zen and effortless to watch it one more time…and there is always one more. The vast majority of everything else just make me feel like I have been mugged for my time.
I guess there are people for whom Celine Dion is the greatest talent ever, but I’m not listening if I can avoid it.
I rented Titanic once (on vhs, which was the fashion at the time) and I don’t think I need to see it again. It’s been on tv, but it not worth much attention.
Now Clash of the Titans, that was awesome. There’s no painting of Kate Winslet, but it does have a stop motion Medusa.
Old “Clash of the Titans” or new “Clash of the Titans?”
(Actually, I kind of like both. They both have weaknesses, but very different weaknesses. And the tip-of-the-hat to Bubo, the mechanical owl, was hilarious. “I don’t know. Leave it!”)
