78 - "Titanic" (1997)

     Due to the fact that Titanic ruled the all-time box office record for 12 years until Avatar came along, I feel pretty safe in assuming this is another movie that almost everyone has seen. Titanic was the number one movie in America for a record 15 consecutive weeks!! 15!! That's hard to fathom but it received repeated viewings from young teenage girls who were definitely going through Leo-mania at the time. And while the focus for them may have been on Leo and his romantic angle with Kate Winslet, what is actually there is a wonderful film that combines drama and action with some amazing special effects work to create one of the few true epics of the past 30 years. Titanic went on to receive 11 Oscars at the 1998 Academy Awards and most of them were well deserved as they were primarily in the technical categories. It also won Best Picture, and while I think Good Will Hunting was the better picture from that year (as you will see later in the list) I can understand why Titanic won and I don't much of an issue with it. The script and the acting in the film are nothing to write home about but nothing is terrible either. The beautiful Kate Winslet, and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, would both go on to give much better performances but both of them hold their own here. Titanic is an epic in every sense of the word and I think every home movie library collection should have it in there somewhere.