Near, far, or wherever he may be, James Cameron is always close to Titanic. Cameron looks to his Oscar-winning epic for his first big-screen release since 1997, a 3-D Imax documentary that explores never-before-seen wreckage of Titanic (the ship, not Kate Winslet’s career), narrated by the film’s mock-documentarian, Bill Paxton. Cameron, Paxton, and a group of scientists and historians went aboard a Russian research ship and took two submarines two miles under the ocean’s surface to the explore the hulk.Two high-definition underwater remote-operated video cameras were specially created for the film and maneuvered within the ship’s wreckage to reveal hidden treasures of the luxury liner, such as the undamaged stained-glass windows in the dining room and a glass and carafe intact upon a shelf in a cabin. Such details are haunting, unlike the phony " ghost " passengers and crew superimposed over the underwater images or Paxton’s blithering and self-important voiceover narration. As for the 3-D element, it’s mostly a gimmick and distraction and is only briefly used. The underwater exploratory technology is the real deal here but is only cursorily explained; it deserves a documentary of its own without Cameron’s bells and whistles. (59 minutes)