EW’s Owen Gleiberman gets Titanic over, under, down, around and sideways — he gets the all of it, the heart of it, the delight, the wowness, the metaphors, the sadness and the transportation…the oompah trumping cornball each and every time, and to hell with the cheap snarkos and naysayers. Here’s the closing graph in his Titanic 3D review:

“A starry-eyed youth romance that collides with history and disaster: That’s the ‘concept’ of Titanic. [And] yet there’s so much more going on in this movie, with its deftly structured mythological framework, its heart-of-the-ocean timelessness, and — yes, I’ll say it — its hauntingly gorgeous Gaelic-pop theme music.

“The Titanic, that splendid vessel, is like the 20th century itself, launching forth in all its looming luxe and promise, with Jack as the symbolic new man on the rise — the aristocrat of the spirit who uses his charm and talent to enter realms from which he would previously have been barred. Rose, with her hint of a Jane Austen dilemma (if she follows her bliss and goes off with Jack, it will leave her family in ruins), is the young feminist who now has the peril, as well as pleasure, of choice.

“And once the ship scrapes up against that iceberg, Jim Cameron‘s filmmaking turns humanly brilliant, as the prospect of sudden death unmasks — in the most touching and shocking ways — who each and everyone on board really is. Jack’s death scene in the water has the shuddery majesty of the greatest silent films, because it’s a moment that touches how vulnerable and precious life really is. To watch Titanic again is to do nothing less than enter a movie and come out the other side, with one’s spirit feeling just a little bit larger.”