Chick flick? Action film? Disaster Film? Drama? Soft porn? This movie is truly everything, and even the humor throughout truly do land, for me, at least. After my high school years when I finally grew up, I was able to freely admit that Titanic is not only one of the greatest films ever made, but also one of my all time favorite films. My top 10 can change on a daily basis, but usually, this one stays up there pretty consistently. I'll never forget when this movie hit theaters at the end of 1997. My sister was either visiting from college or was about to go off to San Diego in the spring. I was in junior high and she had her own life, so the family wasn't together much in those days because, well, that's how it happens when you start to build your own social groups. That whole week leading up to our showtime at Regal Edwards Stadium in Valencia, CA. The memory is so close to me I can reach out and just about touch it. We might have grabbed dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, Don Cuco's first. But I remember it was night as it was mid-December and the streets lights were lined with Christmas lights and Christmas wreaths. So I was already pumped full of excitement for Christmas just around the corner, but I think I might have been more excited for Titanic. All week I'd been glued to the news watching live interviews of people walking out of the film, absolutely praising it to high heaven. Women were in tears, teenagers were glowing, young boys were hooping and hollering. The world was right because the Titanic was once again afloat majestically on the sea of the silver screens across the world. Jack Dawson was alive forever, no matter what the movie tried to tell us about his fate. I remember all four of us in our gold Toyota minivan, those vans that looked like an Orca whale, I always thought. My dad, at one point early on the trip, exclaimed like the captain of a ship: "Ahoy! Away we go!" My sister rolled her eyes, I giggled with excitement. I may have been growing out of childish things, but I would never grow out of the thrill of a new movie that was about to change the world. Granted, I didn't know James Cameron going into Titanic. I wasn't yet aware of Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet or even Kathy Bates of Billy Zane. This was a totally new cast to me. It was akin to a monster movie anyway, you show up for the monster, not the actors. The monster in Titanic, of course, was a gentle giant gliding though the Atlantic like battle-ready seraph seeking to bring all onboard to the safety of the New York port. I just wanted to get to the safety of the movie theater, my butt planted, my bladder empty, and a ship-shaped box of popcorn in my lap that would likely be eaten before the final preview ended twenty-five minutes after the lights dimmed. The movie happened, and thought I don't know the names of everyone in that crowded theater, I can tell you that no one was the same that night. Titanic wasn't a mere movie to kill 90 minutes with like Mouse Hunt playing for the kids and poor parents next door. Jack Nicholson was yucking it up with racial slurs in As Good As It Gets in the theater across the hall. For those who got to the box office after the last Titanic ticket sold out, Spielberg's ship movie Ammistad was playing as another sea voyage option. Pierce Brosnan was shooting it up in his second Bond outing at the time Titanic was in theaters in Tomorrow Never Dies. Hollywood never looked better than 1996 and 1997, and we were still in for plenty of surprises in 1998. Quality would Peter off in 1999 and then for the next decade or so moving forward. But for now, life - at least life through the big screen - was good. And now, 26 years later, I've been making it a point to watch Titanic annually for the last few years, because it's too good of a movie to just let slip through your fingers. I'm not sure how many people out there love it as much as I do. Sure, the CGI people on the wide shots of the ship's deck are super obvious, but that can easily be overlooked because the script, as simple of a love story as it is, is so tightly written and the characters are so engaging (perhaps because you know their fate going into the film). You may not realize it, but James Horner's score does to this movie what John Williams' does to Star Wars: It elevates a great film to an excellent film. The Southampton track alone is enough to rival E.T. and Jurassic Park. And yeah, it was overplayed in the late 90's, but you've got to admit, when you hear Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On," your mind is taken instantly to snapshots of this film. That's what a great feature song is supposed to do. I hadn't seen Aliens or Terminator 2 when I first saw Titanic. These are earlier films directed by James Cameron. These are movies I finally got to experience as an older teenager. Sure, I'd seen the motor bike chase scene in the wash a bunch of times on TV, but the commercials would come on and force my hand ...
