Catherine Zeta Jones Movie:

		List Price: $6.99		Label: Platinum Disc Salesrank: 63713 Released: April 4, 2006
		Our Price: $3.73
		Used Price: $3.64
		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: DVD

The Titanic Reviews:
Best of the Titanic films
2007-07-01 - If a tragedy can be seen as entertaining than this is it. A delightful film with a superb cast of well developed growing characters portrayed in excellent costumes and superb sets.

Beutiful settings of well dressed ladies accompanied by fine gentlemen and properly dressed women.

Superb acting all around.

A well developed story that covers every aspect of the Titanic tragedy.

Much better than the other Titanic film.



one of the better versions
2005-11-20 - The 1996 Hallmark miniseries of TITANIC was unfortunate in that it ended up being largely overshadowed by James Cameron's 1997 big-screen blockbuster (by the time the miniseries was aired in the UK and Australia, James Cameron's version had well and truly exploded onto the scene). This was a pity, as the Hallmark version has many things in it's favour.

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Peter Gallagher head a star-studded international cast, and the adaptation succeeds in blending five different stories into the narrative. Perhaps most importantly this version depicts a real-life passenger called Alice Cleaver (played by Felicity Waterman) who attempted to kidnap the baby of her employers when the boat began to sink (leaving the family to search for the child until all the lifeboats had departed, thus sealing their fate). At the time of this miniseries, Catherine Zeta-Jones was at the cusp of Hollywood superstardom. She looks ravishing as Isabella Paradine, who rekindles an affair with her first beau Wynn Park (Peter Gallagher). Also in this miniseries, we meet in greater detail John Jacob Astor (Scott Hylands) and his pregnant young second wife Madeline (Janne Mortil). The affair of Astor and Madeline was one of the biggest scandals of the period and it's great to have them as prominent characters in this version. The younger romance is provided by thief Jamie (Mike Doyle) and Danish convert Aase (Sonsee Neu-Ahray). No version of TITANIC would be complete without the ebullient and "unsinkable" Molly Brown (Marilu Henner plays her with enough spirit and spunk to make Debbie Reynolds proud and Kathy Bates pale). And the villain of the piece is thieving steward Simon Doonan (performed with oily relish by Tim Curry). A flavour of classic Hollywood is provided by George C. Scott as the Captain and Eva Marie Saint as the selfish Hazel Foley.

The romance of Bella (Zeta-Jones) and Wynn (Gallagher) is a captivating and moving one, played with style and elegance, and I consider it far more effective than the romance in the James Cameron spectacle. True, the special effects are lacking in this version but the dramatics and acting more than compensate. A fantastic production and one I revisit often. Originally shown in two parts. With Tamsin Kelsey, Eric Keenleyside, Malcolm Stewart, Roger Rees, Harley Jane Kozak, Kevin Conway, Matt Hill and Barry Pepper.

THIS MOVIE STRUCK A BERG. PUN INTENDED.
2005-11-14 - From a casting viewpoint, this TV movie has a lot to offer. Great cast. From a plot viewpoint, this movie went down with the ship. I absolutely agree with other reviewers that the rape scene was totally unnecessary. I guess with so many versions of the Titanic story already told, the film makers needed something to make this version stand out. Unfortunately, the brutal rape of a young immigrant girl was a very bad choice as a plot variant. This production makes one realize that there already exist quite a sufficient number of movies on this subject. I mean, in the end, the ship sinks and people die. Tragic, yes, but I think we all get it by now. Enough already.

Disposed of the disc
2005-07-06 - I have never felt so strongly about getting rid of a movie as I did this one--and I disposed of the disc in tonight's trash! What an outrageous and disgusting movie. The boat was a veritable Peyton Place...thievery, fornication, a horrid rape scene and discussion about a maid who appeared thoroughly unbalanced in the early part of the movie who was rumored to have murdered her baby. I saw and heard enough of this garbage being passed off as entertainment and stopped there. Protect your own mind and heart and that of your family by passing this one by. It's worse than AWFUL. I understand it received an Emmy award...despicable.

What a stinker: They should all be ashamed!
2005-05-01 - If you're really interested in the tragic story of the Titanic, and the dignity, courage, grace and dispair of the passengers that will tug your heart, see "A Night to Remember," based on the definitive book by Walter Lord, which I read as a kid as soon as it came out.

Or, there's the B&W Titanic movie starring Barbara Stanwick, Clifton Webb, a very young Robert Waggoner, et al. You might wonder why they need to create this fictional dysfunctional family to carry the story, if the disaster itself weren't enough.

But it steadily goes downhill from there.

There's the James Cameron version of Titanic which, to me, has an increasingly contrived story line as if the actual story itself couldn't maintain an audience's attention. Such as:

-- Jack and Rose somehow were allowed to get to the bow of the ship, with him shouting "I'm king of the world!!!!," with Capt. Smith proudly looking on from the bridge, as if he would allow passengers to have access there in the first place. And Jack & Rose are only wearing flimsey (especially Rose) clothes. And this was April 1912 on a ship in the North Atlantic traveling at 20+ knots at 35-degree weather.

-- This was before birth control, and Rose didn't have a husband to account for a pregnancy. But here she is as a first class aristocratic passenger with a guy traveling steerage she met only a day or so before in the back seat of a Renault. Oh, pleeeeezeeee.

-- Or Mrs. James J. (aka Molly) Brown "just happening" to have her son's trunk with her, which has a tuxedo that "just happens" to fit Jack for the big event. Oh, gag!!! Never happened.

This version, with George C. Scott and many others, is the worst distortion of what actually happened, and the story line is so contrived, convoluted and fabricated that it should't have been named "Titanic."

J. Bruce Ismay never gave direct orders to contradrict Capt. Smith's instructions to the crew.

Capt. Smith would never let a passenger take the helm of the ship.

What really bothers me with this version, which I think is dispicable, is that they create their own sensational version of dialogue among actual crew/passengers that never occurred, based on testimony of actual survivors, and a lot of these people died. This really happened.

They should be ashamed.