Titanic

James Cameron is The Man. There, I've said it.

Finally, a movie I've been reading about and waiting to see for almost a year, and it delivers on every level. Absolutely worth the wait, and one of the most amazing things I've seen on film ever. This movie is not quite the disaster movie the ads make it out to be. It's moving, jaw dropping and visually mindblowing.

Titanic is more of a ghost story and a love story than a disaster movie. If that seems out of character for the director of True Lies and Aliens and T2, remember the scene in The Abyss where Ed Harris is fighting for Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio's life. There is a warmth and human element to all of his movies, but none more than this one.

You all know the story by now. The movie actually starts in the present, with Bill Paxton as a diver out to find a diamond that would now be worth more than the Hope Diamond. He gets some assistance from a 101 year old Rose (Gloria Stuart, who's wonderful), who happened to be wearing the diamond when the ship went down. She tells the whole story of her star crossed love affair with a boy in steerage who won his Titanic ticket in a poker game (The scenes where the now sunken ship morphs into the glorious Titanic are bone chilling). The main thrust of the movie is the triangle between Rose (the always delightful Kate Winslet), steerage boy Jack Dawson (an excellent Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose's old money fiancee Cal Hockney (Billy Zane, who must have an excellent agent because he could not match anyone else on screen).

The love affair has been done before: poor kid with nothing falls for rich girl with everything. Rich girl falls in love with his lust for life while all the people around her are too busy being proper to have fun. Poor Zane is given the worst role of all: The soulless, overbearing snot nosed rich boy. Perhaps that is why he paled so much compared to the rest of the cast. His part, while meant to be disliked, was also not written well. Cameron has never won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and he won't win one here. But the story works better than you would think.

Credit Winslet and DiCaprio for making us buy into the love story, which is indeed a tale of young love. And of course, right when she decides that Jack is the one for her is when all hell breaks loose. Remember, Cameron did spend $200 million to make this movie. There are a few shots, though, where it looked like he trimmed his budget a bit. Virtually every daylight pan shot of the Titanic is an FX shot, and they're almost as obvious as the plane crash in Air Force One. Don't let them discourage you. The last hour is incredibly realistic.

When the ship hits the iceberg, which is almost anticlimactic given the fact that it only grazed the iceberg yet created a huge hole in the hull, Cameron puts his money where his mouth is and delivers what feels like a real time sinking of the ship. He builds the suspense with expert timing, showing you how the ship slowly filled with water to the point where it stood nearly straight up in the air. The battle then ensues to get on the few lifeboats the ship had in the first place (The designers felt no need to have enough lifeboats for everyone since the ship was deemed unsinkable). It's a similar Cameron theme, the arrogance of man in the face of technology. I spent the last hour mouth agape at what I was seeing. It is literally unlike anything I've ever seen on film. Technically brilliant, visually stunning, it's Cameron's finest hour.

Yes, this movie is three hours and fourteen minutes long, but I've seen 90 minute movies that felt longer than this. I was wrapped up in the story from the beginning, and could actually feel my heart pounding in my chest during certain moments. Hands down the best movie I've seen all year, and worth every penny of its gigantic budget.