Wednesday, December 19, 2007

DOOMED OCEAN LINER: Ten years ago today, Titanic was released in theaters across America.

While we can all bemoan the fact that this is the highest-grossing film of all time (as well as blame it for that song), it did help launch the worthy careers of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio into the stratosphere, and beyond the hokey melodrama is a kick-ass action movie which covers the second half of the film. When (spoiler!) the boat goes straight up vertical and the people start dropping, it's as awesome as any peril sequence in Jurassic Park. Also, the narrative framing device of "let's show you a computer simulation of what's going to happen, so that you know more than the passengers when stuff starts going wrong" remains one of the great screenwriting moves in recent memory.

So, Titanic: great film? greatest film? or overrated, subtle-as-a-sledgehammer crap?

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