Men in Black secured the box office crown in 1997 thanks in large part to its July release date, because the second movie on my list for this week, Titanic, simply didn't have enough time to beat it as a December release.
First though: Men in Black. I remember seeing it in Oakville at the Mews theatre, where I later worked for a summer and as of now operates as a Film.ca cinema, and I walked out feeling like I had just experienced a spiritual successor to Ghostbusters. I think it's a really smart, tight movie, with some surprisingly thoughtful and sweet scenes, all from Tommy Lee Jones and his views on people and his yearning for his old life.
That yearning was so well done and so central to the conclusion of the movie that I can't stand the sequel for how it betrayed those great moments. There probably was a good enough path to make a second movie but they sure didn't find it. The third one was all right, though, and I never saw the reboot.
Titanic is awesome. It just is. Watching a period, pseudo-teen romance for 90 minutes and then immediately chasing it with a 90-minute disaster movie is brilliant, and I like both halves of the movie in equal parts. Winslet and DiCaprio do their best to carry the movie at their age, but it's the supporting cast that holds them up. Three cheers for Frances Fisher, and three more for David Warner.
If ever there was a movie that could benefit from revisiting and augmenting effects, it would be this one. The only glaring problems exist in scenes like wide shots of passengers and crew walking on deck and a couple of photoshopped faces. Fix those up because the effects simply weren't good enough at the time, and the movie would pass muster.
Cameron's epic will, of course, be the top moneymaker next year, which means I watched it this week for its Oscar win, and I'll pass on watching it again next week. It is, noteworthy, of course, as the first movie in my project since Rocky in 1976 that took both tops in the box office and the Best Picture Oscar.
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