Titanic, the billion-dollar James Cameron epic on the verge of its 20th anniversary, has sailed into the National Film Registry. The mammoth film was a juggernaut from the moment it hit theaters, quickly becoming one of the highest grossing film of all time and turning young actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet into bona fide movie stars. Its selection by the Library of Congress is a lovely cherry on top of this year’s whirlwind anniversary celebrations for Titanic, which was recently re-released in theaters in a new Dolby Vision format. “It’s stunning,” Cameron recently gushed to Vanity Fair. “It’s beyond 70 millimeter, it’s beyond any format that you’ve seen before.”
The legendary blockbuster joins a motley crew of National Film Registry selections, which also includes Die Hard, the Bruce Willis action film that may or may not be a Christmas movie, depending on who you ask. The Goonies also truffle-shuffled its way into the registry, capping off a banner year for Sean Astin, who recently popped up in 80s deification project Stranger Things.
Christopher Nolan’s amnesia thriller Memento has also been selected for preservation; released in 2000, the film is the youngest selection in the bunch.
On a rather timely note, Spike Lee’s Oscar-nominated documentary 4 Little Girls has also been selected. The film is about the four black children who were murdered in the 1963 Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, a terrorist act that was carried out by white supremacists. The doc’s selection arrives mere hours after Democrat Doug Jones beat Republican candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race on Tuesday night. Back in the late 1990s, Jones was the lead attorney who prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, two members of the Ku Klux Klan who carried out the 1963 bombing. Both were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. After Tuesday’s highly anticipated election, Jones has another historical achievement to burnish his civil service legacy.
Here are all the films that have been selected this year by the National Film Registry:
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Boulevard Nights (1979)
Die Hard (1988)
Dumbo (1941)
Field of Dreams (1989)
4 Little Girls (1997)
Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection (1920s and 1930s)
Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
The Goonies (1985)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)
La Bamba (1987)
Lives of Performers (1972)
Memento (2000)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
Spartacus (1960)
Superman (1978)
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)
Time and Dreams (1976)
Titanic (1997)
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
Wanda (1971)
With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1937-1938)
