Never an Absolution: 15 years later, a look at the 5 best films murdered during Titanic's 4-month reign of box office terror.

This winter will of course mark the fifteenth anniversary of the momentous box office run of Titanic.  For over three months, the James Cameron epic dominated the box office in a fashion unseen since E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial during its initial 1982 release.  The film sat atop the box office for an unprecedented fifteen weekends, a record for unbroken domination and the second most weekends at number one on history (E.T. had sixteen weekends atop, but only six of them were in a row).  From December 19th, 1997 until April 3rd, 1998, it caused crushed pretty much everything in its path.  Aside from a few offhand Fridays were a new film temporarily took the top spot (US Marshals, The Man With the Iron Mask and the re-release of Grease during its March run), but the first three months of 1998 were all about Titanic.  But while we must remember this astonishing run of utter and complete domination, which was the last of its kind, we must also take a moment to remember the many many films laid to waste in its path.  Oh there were a few survivors, such as the aforementioned Fugitive spin-off and the Three Musketeers sequel that happened to also star Leonardo DiCaprio, along with Adam Sandler's break-out smash The Wedding Singer (as well as um, Everest IMAX which slowly earned $87 million after opening on March 6th). But otherwise Winter 1998 was merely mass grave.  Ironically, there were actually at least several worthwhile films, now mostly forgotten in the dustbin of history, that bombed during those cold winter months.  So this is a place to remember five worthwhile pictures that were flattened by the mighty ship.  All deserved their moment in the spotlight, some have become cult favorites while others are barely remembered at all.    

Oliver Stone's star-filled, and unapologetically R-rated Savages, the official 'adult popcorn film of summer 2012', gets a down-and-dirty trailer.

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It used to be a custom of sorts to have at least one somewhat adult-skewing genre picture in any given summer, something to stand out for older audiences who liked their summer thrills with a bit less fantasy and a bit more gore and/or nudity.  Be it Wolf in 1994, A Time to Kill in 1996, Swordfish in 2001, The Road to Perdition in 2002, or Collateral in 2004 (along with, arguably The Manchurian Candidate redo), this once time-honored tradition somewhat went the way of the dinosaur as seemingly adult genre fare like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Da Vinci Code, Live Free or Die Hard and Salt got squeezed into the PG-13 zone and R-rated comedies like The Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, and The Hangover compensated for the lack of truly R-rated action fare.  Aside from the likes of The Expendables in 2010, summer has pretty much been the place where everything is aimed at everyone for the last several years.  But Universal senses an opening, not only moving this seemingly trashy bit of pulp fiction into the summer, but slotting it three days after the debut of Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man.