I, Concede

I hated Titantic. I never even saw the entire movie but I just thought it was a lot of overwrought blokbuster swill. Seeing Kate Winslet semi-nude was kind of awesome (I think there was a bare-ass shot but that may be a bit of revisionist fantasy on my part) but I mostly thought the movie sucked. And because of that, I never bought into the hype about Leonardo Dicaprio. I thought he was good, fine, passable, whatever but all of the talk of his brilliance and depth as an artist -- I didn't see it. Not in any of his films.

However yesterday I finally got around to seeing The Departed. For starters, it was fun seeing Jack Nicholson in a way reprising his Joker role from Batman. And Matt Damon is really good. I was already sold on him because of the "Bourne films" and the Kevin Smith cameos (and his lip-sync'd performance of "Scotty Doesn't Know" in Eurotrip) but this was yet another reminder of why he is more than a pretty face. Dicaprio though, finally won me over. This movie was so good and he was so convincing in it, even more convincing than Depp in Donnie Brasco, that I am giving in. Is Leonardo Dicaprio the "actor of our generation?" Not definitively but I am putting him in the running.