Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
This two-cassette set of Titanic has been formatted to fit your TV; the film itself is larger than life. When the theatrical release of James Cameron's Titanic was delayed from July to December of 1997, media pundits speculated that Cameron's $200-million disaster epic would cause the director's downfall, signal the end of the blockbuster era, and sink Paramount Pictures as quickly as the ill-fated luxury liner had sunk on that fateful night of April 14, 1912. Titanic would surpass the $1-billion mark in global box-office receipts, win 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director, launch the best-selling movie soundtrack of all time, and make a global superstar of Leonardo DiCaprio. A bona fide pop-cultural phenomenon, the film has all the ingredients of a blockbuster (romance, passion, luxury, grand scale, a snidely villain, and an epic, life-threatening crisis), but Cameron's alchemy of these ingredients proved more popular than anyone could have predicted. His stroke of genius was to combine absolute authenticity with a pair of fictional lovers whose tragic fate would draw viewers into the heart-wrenching reality of the Titanic disaster. As starving artist Jack Dawson and soon-to-be-married socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater, DiCaprio and Kate Winslet won the hearts of viewers around the world, and their brief, but never forgotten, love affair provides the humanity that Cameron needed to turn Titanic into a moving emotional experience. Although some of the computer-generated visual effects look artificial, others--such as the climactic splitting of the ship's sinking hull--are state-of-the-art marvels of cinematic ingenuity. It's an event film and a monument to Cameron's risk-taking audacity, blending the tragic irony of the Titanic disaster with just enough narrative invention to give the historical event its fullest and most timeless dramatic impact. --Jeff Shannon |
Customer Reviews
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Blub...blub...blub, May 12, 2023
Two major problems for me. How is it that Rose can wander around in the water inside the ship for a long stretch of time, dressed only in a nightie, looking for Jack and emerge unscathed, but that same water (at the same temperature) kills unfortunate souls outside in minutes? Also, Cameron could have made an epic if he'd just stuck to the historical facts. There were enough dramatic real stories on board without having to resort to paper cut-out Hollywood lovers. Read the real accounts and you can pick out many scenarios that would have worked better. Oh well, Kate Winslet looked great and the sinking was pretty intense.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Cameron: Pompous Windbag, May 5, 2023
There are a plethora of reviews here which concur with my sentiments, so I will refrain from expressing them in this review. I will say one thing, though: James Cameron's Oscar acceptance speech was the most ridiculous acceptance speech I have ever heard. Never mind the "I'm the king of the world!" line. How about his moment of silence for those who perished on the Titanic? Perhaps Cameron felt obligated to acknowledge the dead since he was making millions dramatizing their tragedy. Perhaps he was being sincere in his sympathies. I don't know. What I do know is that it was one of the most cringe-worthy moments in Academy history. But Cameron doesn't stop there; he simply cannot leave good-enough alone, so he continues to babble on incessantly as his head continues to expand. Whereas most actors and filmmakers at least make an attempt to conceal their egotism, Cameron is unabashedly vainglorious, boldly forsaking the humility smokescreen that so many others in show business rely upon for refuge.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 My favourite film EVER, but what about the REAL heroes?, May 2, 2023
I think this is an absolutely beautiful film, the cast are all fantastic, down to the smallest parts, the set is breathtaking, and the whole story is just brilliant. There are definitely a few alterations I would make, but I'll come to that later.
Storyline's quite simple, big ship, everyone boards it, poor people, middling people, sparkling rich, socialite people. Rich girl Rose falls for poor boy Jack, and vice versa even more so, BUT.... problem - Rose is engaged to mean and slimey Caledon Hockley. Everything is just getting steamy and romantic when, BIGO problemo, there are ice warnings.
This is, in my opinion, the beginning of the most exciting part. The acting of Jack and Rose is very good, but it is cheesy and not particularly believable. It's the REAL heroes who really make it, all the crew, captain, Mr Andrews etc. I mean, they were the proper heroes, weren't they? I was TOTALLY AND UTTERLY moved by 1st officer and 5th officers, their beautiful performances have me sobbing every single time. You actually feel like you are ON the boat in this movie.
There is nudity in this, Rose is drawn by Jack naked and they have sex in her fiancee's Renault. The emotional intensity of it is what makes it unsuitable for young children though. I first watched it when it first came out here in England in late '97 when I was 6 and a half, and the people falling and the boat snapping and the officer shooting himself in the head were too much for me, and to be honest I think you really have to be at least 12 or 13 to appreciate this film fully.
Alterations - as I have said yeah I would include more of the crew, and perhaps make it even MORE emotional (if that's possible!), but then I'm a perfectionist sort of girl.
Once again, this is a beautiful movie. EVERYONE has to see it, it's just one of those films, like Mary Poppins or Ben Hur, that we ALL have to see, and if you're over 12 or so it is just the perfect film if you want a giggle, a good old howl, or a terrorised grip at the sofa. Top class stuff, full marks. x x x
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A movie worth watching, Apr 29, 2023
i saw titanic when i was five in the theater, and i was very impressed. Yes i admit i didnt get get some of the older mature stuff, but now when i watch it, i see how great the movie is from and older point of view. The part where Kate Winslet is getting painted is not that bad. The dont have her doing poses or anything. One chick on here was saying that it's totally graphic and kids shouldnt see it. Don't listen to her. Take my advice- rent this movie.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Fare thee well, Titanic, goin' down to the bottom of the sea, Apr 28, 2023
"They wouldn't let Jack Johnson on the US Titanic
(Fare thee well Titanic goin' down)
They said, boy get back to your hole, dis ship she don't haul no coal
(Down to the bottom of the sea)"
The feminist power of this movie is that its greatness cannot be acknowledged and the *bien-pensant* dismisses it as Hollywood: but it is great Hollywood.
Much less than Sep 11,we haven't dealt with Titanic and the way the lower clawsses were trapped like rats. In fact, upon the release of Titanic, Chicago radio station WFMT, the last hope of the bien pensant, refused a number of phone in requests to play the above song about Jack Johnson's inability to get a ride on the doomed ship.
Because the song was by a white boy naming and narrating what was being done to his brother, it transgressed the unwritten rule as does the very thought that we might maintain social class boundaries up to the gates of hell.
The best films are always chick flicks.
UPDATE 5-17-2005
Wow, another Nolan Ryan: another perfect game: 0 of 4. The Jack Johnson and Titanic nexus still hath power to offend I see.
I am sure that the type of reader who like the reviewer above who "predicted" that old canoe was goin' down an hour into the film, and concluded from his lack of moron suspense that the scriptwriters were the morons: the type of reader who jest loved it when Leornard diCaprio died (bearing within himself that destructiveness which is constitutive of society): the type of reader whose critique of Cameron's acceptance speech was informed by the sour resentment of the born loser PUNCHED OUT at my phrase "the feminist power".
"The feminist power" is lame. Nonetheless, Jim Cameron laughed his way to the bank because so many chicks dragged their boyfriends to this thing, and after the film, on Grand Avenue in Chicago, a lady sung to me the song she'd learned in Bible school about how it were a shame how that ship went down to de bottom of the sea.
Yeah, I wondered too why Kate Winslet didn't get hypothermia in the bowels of the sinking ship but I figure her extra layer of Rubeneque avoirdupois and love's heat made he oblivious to the water temperature. That, and the fact that the water in the ship was heated by the dying boilers and electrical cables.
The film offends because it was popular without being a shootemup and Billy Zane (who first emerged as Sam Neill's and Nicole Kidman's dark American foil in Dead Calm, an enjoyable example of an anti-American Australian film) may have been uncomfortable for the Yuppie a-hole segment of the audience. It offends because it teaches us what a waste it is to live a life in First Class.
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Based on 1805 reviews.