Lists
- ranked 9 in Roger Ebert's Best Films of 1997
- ranked 10 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies (1999)
- ranked 25 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills
- ranked 37 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions
- ranked 54 in The Guardian Top 100 Films
- ranked 57 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies (2003)
- ranked 96 in Chicago Tribune 100 Best Films of the Century
- ranked 336 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- ranked 973 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions Nominees
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills Nominees
- one of Best Director Academy Award Winners
- one of Best Picture Academy Award Winners
- one of Films Containing the Wilhelm Scream
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, 10th Anniversary Edition
I had expected a turgid melodrama, and in that I was not disappointed. Written with the turgid bombast typical of historical epics and delivered with all the élan of an afternoon soap, Titanic only begins to shine when its titular vessel begins to sink.
If Avatar proved nothing else, it proved that James Cameron is a master at creating arresting images; he handles the disaster beautifully: the play of light on water in luxurious corridors drowning thigh-high, china tumbling from shelves, a drowned woman in a white dress floating, slowly, immaculate. And, of course, crushing torrents, thousands plunging to their deaths, et cetera.
I'd been prepared to write it off completely, but it's a very effective bit of film-making. Even the bathos of the framing story, I must confess, got to me by the end. Worth seeing once.