Titanic

Watching Titanic again after so many years, in a remastered 4K and 3D version is a truly sensual experience. All the more so when you watch this 25-year-old opus and realise that a better film will be hard to find in cinemas this year. Titanic resonates even more intensely when its screening is preceded by trailers for Quantumania, parallel universes, digital fests of all kinds, in short, recyclates that either make your head explode or your eardrums pop. But as soon as the old familiar melody plays after 20 minutes of trailer hell and the black and white "old" intro with the silhouette of the ship comes on, I am in my element. In 20 seconds, James Cameron produces more emotion in two cuts than all those future supercomics combined. Titanic is a celebration and homage to modern filmmaking, a benchmark of cinema. It stuns with its breathtaking fragility, old-world wisdom, palette of iconic scenes and colossal epic. The pinnacle of world cinema and deservedly one of the best pieces of all time. One of the few that has avoided ageing. (02/15/2023)

Romantic drama that breaks hearts with every viewing, subtle jokes that, in the viewer's adulthood, reveal how complex Titanic truly is, and above all, Cameron's life's work. Only with a decent, soon to be twenty-year gap and the fading of the last remnants of the uncontrollable hype from the turn of the century, can the greatness of the entire spectacle be fully appreciated. Unsinkable, unforgettable, and practically flawless. And I have no doubt that it will continue to grow. (04/29/2006)

Today's 3D screening at Imax only confirmed what every viewer probably already knows: Titanic will never get old. It’s still brimming with energy, moving and tragic, funny and technically epic as it was 15 years ago. And it has survived everything. Even the pastime back then of mocking DiCaprio, who at the time was the personification of posters and stickers in teen magazines, suffered from the adoration of whiny teenage girls, and is now one of the world's most respected actors. Cameron's Titanic has survived the rapid evolution in the field of visual effects and even today can stand proudly next to all sorts of visually lavish flicks, without getting get lost and or blushing with shame. And just as I enjoyed the technical precision of the reconstruction of the sinking itself before, I now enjoy the romantic storyline, which is definitely not a Pretty Woman type of thing, Cameron endowed it with lightness, wit and a pleasant feeling at the heart. And as time goes by, the film is appreciated (and cherished) by a new and younger generation of viewers. The proof is in FilmBooster itself, when I registered in 2002, Titanic had an average rating of 75%. And today? You can see for yourselves! Bugger me, it was awesome! (04/11/2012)

An opulent, spectacular picture which is simply flawless in technical terms. The outrageous length surprisingly didn’t break Titanic’s back, mainly thanks to Cameron’s directing. The end result flows by nicely, although there were a couple of places that could have done with more keen editing. The first half is more for the female audience, but then, after the collision, the disaster movie pandas more to the male audience. The characters are so terribly flat here, but thanks to their charisma, this isn’t boring. The most expensive movie ever and the greatest ever box office success, which is neither the highest quality movie ever, but it certainly is well above average. (03/16/2022)

I avoided Titanic like a demon a cross, but eventually it caught up with me... And oddly enough, it wasn't a head-on collision, but rather a light miss. The story is sweet and protracted, but as soon as the overgrown steamer began to sink, there was plenty to watch - I finally recognized it as Cameron's work. Surprisingly, I quite liked the unruly Leonardo DiCaprio, but I didn't know much about the bourgeois maiden Kate Winslet. It's just shabby love story that Cameron painted gold. In places the paint is sparse, so rust shines through. Definitely a classic seasonal hit... Edit 2012: beautiful proof of how often a person is wrong. To see this film as a kitsch love story actually hides the essence of what Titanic really is: the product of Cameron's massive fetishism and a metaphorical path to the coveted object that comes to life with the power of the film and allows the filmmaker to lead the viewer through its lost nooks. The director simply captures the feeling that still seizes me today when I look at a dead wreck in the depths - a burning longing to "give faded matter meaning and shape with a story". The result is a film full of contradictions, but above all a film extremely precisely constructed and economically told. All the pleasure from it comes from pure rationality. If Rose says: "It doesn't make sense, that's why I believe it," I say "Everything makes sense here, that's why I believe it (but I do not succumb :-))". (01/25/2004)