Titanic was the highest-grossing film released in 1997, and remains the biggest money-making film in history. The runner-up (Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park) earned less than half of Titanic's massive $1.8 billion. The remainder of the top five in box office revenue are Men in Black, Air Force One, and the mediocre James Bond thriller Tomorrow Never Dies. Although they weren't technically released in 1997, Special Edition versions of the original Star Wars Trilogy were re-released in early 1997, which created renewed interest in the upcoming Prequels.
Titanic took the Academy awards for both Best Picture and Best Director (James Cameron). Other notable Oscars went to Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt for As Good as it Gets and Kim Basinger for L.A. Confidential, a film that also catapulted both Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce into the American spotlight. Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon all won their first Academy Awards for Good Will Hunting (acting and writing, respectively). Good Will Hunting was dedicated to Beat-era legends Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, both of whom died in 1997.
1997 was the year that the Independent film wave spawned by Pulp Fiction had its last great successes (to be eclipsed by the superhero wave that started in 1998 with Blade). Among the more memorable and successful independent films are Chasing Amy (arguably Kevin Smith's best "serious" film), Good Will Hunting, and Boogie Nights, which included breakthrough performances from Mark Wahlberg, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, and John C. Reilly. Mike Meyers released the first in the popular Austin Powers series. This is also the year that Howard Stern crowned himself "King of All Media" based on the success of his autobiographical Private Parts.
One of the more surprising hits of the year was England's The Full Monty, which cracks the top ten highest grossing films of 1997 and is arguably the most successful on the list (since it was made for less than $5 Million). Robert Duvall's The Apostle was released in 1997, based on a script that he wrote in the 1980's, and is regarded as one of the best performances of his career. Ang Lee's first American film, The Ice Storm, was released in 1997 to critical success but poor box office returns, but it has since earned a reputation on home video and even a Criterion Collection DVD. David Lynch's Lost Highway was given two thumbs down by Siskel and Ebert and flopped at the box office, but is now regarded as a cult classic and Lynch's best work of the 1990's. Christopher Guest directed and starred in the mockumentary Waiting for Guffman; while not an instant hit, this led to subsequent mockumentary hits like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. '97 was also the year of the John Cusack vehicle Grosse Pointe Blank, a fine bookend to Cusack's 1980's film career.
The biggest disappointment of 1997 was probably Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, which was universally panned by critics and did so poorly at the box office that it killed the Batman film franchise until Batman Begins completely rebooted the character in 2005. Another huge flop was Kevin Costner's The Postman; Costner has yet to direct another film and his acting career has notably suffered, despite successful films like Thirteen Days. 1997 also saw the Volcano disaster flops Dante's Peak and Volcano, and failed sequels like Free Willy 3, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and Speed 2.