To me, 'Pearl Harbor' is one of those movies which stands in the shadow of a better movie, to the extent that you can just watch the better movie and not even bother with the also-ran.
So when people ask about 'Pearl Harbor,' I usually say I saw 'Tora Tora Tora' instead. Another great swap-out is to see 'Das Boot' instead of 'U571' (which I actually watched unfortunately.) Matter of fact, it was this one pair - 'Das Boot' being so accurate and emotionally moving, and U571 just mediocre to useless on all the same areas that 'Das Boot' really grips hard - that made me start compilimg my list of 'replacement' movies.
'Monte Christo' w/ Johnny Depp did not come CLOSE to the satisfying revenges exacted by Richard Chamberlan.
Also, for me, Walter Lord's 'A Night to Remember' blows away 'Titanic' because the 1952 movie deals with the 'Californian' being only 10 miles off and ignoreing the signals even though ships crew were asking that captain about what to do - were they indeed ordered to ignore the signals, and if questioned, to deny that they had seen them?
Also, when they made the Walter Lord movie, the producers actually contacted Harlan & Wolfe (the shipyard where she was built) to ask if any other ships were available which were built to the same class. The answer was no, her sister liners had been used as WW2 troop transports, and had eithergotten sunk or were being scrapped (in 1952.)
BUT - they said - one pair of steam engines of the same class were still in use in a lakeside pumping station in Wales, and the layout in the station was EXACTLY the same as was built for the Titanic. So the film crew went out there actually used one of the engine's pumping power to FLOOD THE BUILDING when they filmed the 'engine room flooding' scene.
- G