I think everyone is forgetting Boogie Nights. I don't know why, but I appear to be the minority here (or maybe Jackie Brown supporters?) Titanic is a masterpiece, but wasn't the best movie of the year. I haven't seen L.A., but I've recently ordered it from Amazon. Good Will Hunting is a great movie, as well as Jackie Brown, but they aren't anywhere near as good as Boogie Nights, the true big bright shining star of 1997, a brilliant year for movies.

Nah. Titanic winning seemed convenient, since it basically had everything that makes a Best Picture winner, well, a Best Picture winner. It was an epic that was bound to please the Academy.
Now I prefer L.A. Confidential myself, and I don't think all the other nominees that year were that strong, but as I say: the cooler - and arguably better - film is most of the time better off not winning an award given by a bunch of uncool dudes. Heh.
You want something corny? You got it!

I think Titanic's win is appropriate, though I've had to watch it many times to draw that conclusion. I adored LA Confidential from the first time I saw it.

Of course.

I don't think either film was necessarily better or worse than the other. Titanic may have a straightforward, "cliched" love triangle. Well LA Confidential has a tired good cop / bad cop routine we've all seen before a million times. Sure the plot is certainly more complex (duh, it's a mystery), but it's standard fare in any noir style film to have a complicated story. The reason people went to see both films in droves was because what they did they did well. Titanic has amazing disaster set pieces and a sense of historical tragedy that hold up to this day, and LA Confidential has great action and suspense. At the end of the day, Titanic won because the Academy likes period costume melodramas, as well as epic movies, and James Cameron was a Hollywood heavyweight. The appeal of Titanic was its notoriety as much as the film itself.
~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.

short answer: yes.
long answer: hell yes!!!
will someone tell that mime to shut up?

A thousand times yes! I am one of the those young girls that went to the movies to see "Titanic" twice, prayed that it won every single award, and jumped up and down when it did! Then I got a brain and watched this one day and just love it! It is one of my all time favorite movies and YES YES YES it should have won all the Oscars and "Titanic" had probably the cheesiest dialog ever written. This is one of the greatest films of all time, and it lost to a sinking boat Soap Opera. lol I was part of the problem back then! lol

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LA Confidential has held up excellently and definitely should have won Best Picture. With that said I am not surprised that Titanic won best picture given that, regardless of the writing that many criticize, it had a grand scale and was a huge event at that time.
Trailer For My Second Feature

Over 4 years later but I'll reply anyway. I agree. This and "The Sweet Hereafter" were IMO the best films of 1997, and I personally would have given the nod to "L.A. Confidential". Watching these films age in later years is really telling - "Titanic" is an entertaining film but it's not especially deep (no pun intended). In fact it has almost no depth at all (seriously, pun
not
intended), and plays out like a feature-length TV soap opera. The characters are more like one-note caricatures, the entire film relies on tired tropes for its story, and the dialogue has aged very poorly. The special effects which seemed oh so special back in 1997 have also not aged well. While the set design and costuming is still top-notch, all of the CGI sequences are painfully obvious. They don't detract a lot from the picture, but they still stick out like a sore thumb. Even the miniatures are pretty noticeable these days. While I think "Titanic" is very well-directed and pays great attention to detail, and remains the kind of fast-paced romp that James Cameron is known for, it comes across as overly formulaic and I don't get anything new out of it with repeated viewings.
"L.A. Confidential" on the other hand is timeless, and it looks as sharp and handsome today as it did in 1997. The script is amazing and the 3 lead actors do it full justice (as well as a marvelous supporting cast). It's wonderful to watch Crowe in top form, well before he was a famous movie star, and Pierce and Spacey stand toe-to-toe with him, resulting in a movie that electrifies in scene after scene after scene. The characters are well-drawn and the plotting is extremely intricate yet understandable. In fact, if you've read the book you might have thought it was an unfilmable story, and really it should have been. But somehow they managed to strike just the right balance in giving the audience important information in a manner they could swallow and at a pace they could handle, all without pandering to audience members who wouldn't be willing to work a little to keep up. The result is a super smart movie that rewards repeated viewings with all sorts of tidbits and nuances you didn't notice on previous viewings; this is a movie that never becomes boring due to familiarity.
Both movies are very well made and I'm not knocking "Titanic" at all, it was a huge achievement. But "L.A. Confidential" has stood the test of time much better and I think it's the bigger achievement, due to the extreme difficulty of translating that particular book (a dense read to be sure) to the screen so effectively. I simply never tire of watching it, ever, while I feel I have seen "Titanic" more than enough times. I felt in 1997 that "L.A." should have won Best Picture, and time has only cemented that position. "Titanic" won on spectacle, but "L.A." is the better motion picture.

But that approach to telling the story of Titanic (i.e. biopic with no tacked-on love story) had already been done, twice before. Those movies were "Titanic" and "A night to remember", both from the 50s.

I cannot believe its been four years since I posted this! I completely forgot about this until I came back to this board.
He wanted to add some depth to Titanic I guess. It was his idea to throw in the romance so that way there was an actual plot. However, L.A Confidential is a mega-masterpiece.
Don't get me wrong - I can see why Cameron won. The direction in Titanic is phenomenal. But Confidential is the way better movie.

As far as I'm concerned the romance in Titanic spoils it for me. I know WHY James Cameron did it, but I would have rather his story focussed on the true story of what happened.
There are some interesting comparisons between the fact and the fiction on this website:
http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/67989947.html?thread=11797216699

Yes, he voted as well. His ballot for Sight & Sound (2002) was taken into consideration.
Here are all the sources for that were considered (individual and miscellaneous lists):
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_sources.htm

Is Barry Norman on that list?

Kevin Spacey was nominated for lead actor at BAFTA, but I suppose he was pushed supporting for Oscar. Crowe and Pearce were pushed lead. All three didn't get an Oscar nom.
Titanic had one lead actor who received a Globe nom
Btw, I'm still waiting for your response on that list.

They couldn't have had best lead actor because it didn't have leads. Titanic did & they just weren't that good 2 dimensional you didn't care nor want to know their back stories.

They couldn't have had best lead actor because it didn't have leads. Titanic did & they just weren't that good 2 dimensional you didn't care nor want to know their back stories.

It was in the running for two acting awards, so apparently the Academy thought highly of the acting as well
It's funny you ignore the list I came up with, but it's understandable though. LA Confidential fans were so sure it would come out on top against Titanic on every critics list, but alas

Didn't win those because it didn't deserve them. As a technical piece yes very good but as the ones it didn't get no.

If it also won acting and/or writing awards, it would have broken the record for most wins and then the film would have received even more backlash. So detractors (like you) should be glad it didn't get those, even though it deserved them as well (especially for acting)
Btw, you said LA Confidential is always in a higher position than Titanic which isn't true, as I've pointed in an earlier post. Titanic is placed 139 spots higher than LA Confidential on a list that's voted by over 3000 critics and filmmakers

Looks like Barry Norman & me agree. Titanic won all the tech awards and rightly so, but no acting no writing and let's not forget best original song. That was how it got as many Oscars as Ben Hur.

L.A Confidental was an entertaining film; but not exactly a strong contender against Titanic. I didn't really find L.A Confidental that impressive, it was a little cheesy and ordinary crime film. Well-acted, yes; the writing was also alright but nothing special.

Shakespeare wouldn't have wiped his ass with that script. The only good things about Titanic were the admittedly impressive production design and special effects. The script was horrible.