Titanic

For once, a much-touted event movie is exactly that: a glorious throwback to the days when epic storytelling really filled the screen. Despite the astonishing technological advances behind James Cameron's great visual spectacle, gimmicks are never allowed to intrude on the film's central illusion: that the audience is drawn back into the Gilded Age and intimately involved in the fateful voyage. For all its painstaking historical detail, this "Titanic" proves anything but quaint, thanks to the phenomenal immediacy of its sights and the pure Hollywood hokum of its story. As two young lovers whose romance is skillfully interwoven with real historical detail, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are a duo with serious chemistry. With his "Gone With the Wind" -caliber ambitions, Mr. Cameron dared to dream of the impossible and came up with the movie of the year. - Janet Maslin, The New York Times