TITANIC remains a towering emotional experience. In one film, Cameron has made his Romeo and Juliet, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, his Fall of Rome, his class satire and a quasi-religious resurrection story with cinema as God at once. In the most true sense of the word, it is amazing.

It’s easy to take TITANIC for granted. It’s been a punchline for years. But “I’m the king of the world” and “paint me like one of your French girls” be damned, this is one of the most masterfully directed movies of the last 50 years. You can’t believe what your eyes are seeing.

All of Cameron’s best movies are ultimately about transcending boundaries. Class, culture, and in some cases even death. This is key to their worldwide appeal, along with the fact both TITANIC and AVATAR are metaphors for civilization itself. They feel intimate and epic at once.

I have a theory “older”movies with huge sets, huge casts of extras and in-camera practical effects play better now than they did at release. After years of being inundiated with green screen and endless CGI, seeing the bewildering scale of TITANIC is even more staggering.

In TITANIC, Cameron nearly diefies film itself. Only in the movies could Titanic, and Rose’s memories, come back to life. Death, life, the afterlife are often referenced. The staircase the figurative gates of Heaven, with the camera always tilting up. It’s a nearly religious film

Also, the chemistry between Winslet and Leo is still insane. You just feel it. On-screen chemistry is one of the movie’s great mysteries, and here it feels so alive, natural and inevitable. You believe they fall in love in a day. They’re the best special effect in the movie.