The Second Worst "Best Picture" in History

Rating: 6/10 (14 October 1999)

There is, in the Motion Picture Academy, a hidden criterion for awards. It's called the Miracle Factor. If a huge, overblown spectacle film production manages to make a killing at the box office and isn't as bad a everyone thought it would be, it acknowledges this miracle with its Best Picture award. This has happened at least twice: in 1952, the malign, Red-baiting Cecil B. De Mille, bullied the corrupt, Red-baiting Academy into presenting him with an Oscar for the ridiculous circus spectacle, Greatest Show on Earth; then, in 1997, an equally corrupt, politically correct Academy presented Titanic with its Oscar.
Titanic deserved an Oscar in only one category - special effects. The story was trite, the acting mediocre (except Leo's, which didn't even get nominated), the editing OK (maybe deserving of an Oscar, since great special effects demand great editing).
Titanic's "beating" out L.A. Confidential is akin to Greatest Show on Earth's "beating" out High Noon. Standing alone, Titanic is just another disaster spectacle. But placed beside a film like L.A. Confidential, Titanic becomes pure garbage.
This view is no better vindicated than by the Academy's choice for Best Picture the following year, Shakespeare in Love. If Titanic got the "Miracle it Wasn't That Bad" Oscar, then Shakespeare in Love was given the "Bad Conscience for Titanic" Oscar.
By the way, if you want to see a GOOD dramatization of the Titanic disaster, get A Night to Remember instead of this travesty.