Jaws

The beauty of Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic is that you can choose how to watch it: as a summery, shark-bitten thriller or as an allegory about the failed leadership of institutions...

...more interesting is where the political and personal intersect... which fits nicely with what the movie as a whole does so well, mixing the horror and adventure with the personal.

Directed by Hollywood's newest wunderkind, Steven Spielberg... Jaws is a grisly film, often ugly as sin, which achieves precisely what it set out to accomplish -- scare the hell out of you. As such, it’s destined to become a classic.

Jaws is a splendidly shrewd cinematic equation which not only gives you one or two very nasty turns when you least expect them but, possibly more important, knows when to make you think another's coming without actually providing it.

I don't think there's a more exciting talent at work right now than Spielberg, an authentic moviemaking prodigy, and perhaps his worst problem from June 20, 1975, on will be preventing success from making a nervous or artistic wreck of him.

Perhaps the most perfectly constructed horror story in our time.

A miraculous achievement from all aspects, Spielberg weaves together drama, humor, adventure, and horror expertly and plays the audience like a fiddle. The main trio of stars are tremendous in their roles.

Jaws is the pinnacle of shark movies, one of the greatest films ever made and still as wholly terrifying and relentlessly fun as it was when it came out in 1975.



Anchored by performances by Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, and the inimitable Robert Shaw, the film is a poignant character study of men with vastly different reasons for embarking on a mission into the great unknown.

Not that it doesn’t pack scares and thrills, but it has a peculiarly ’70s appetite for small character detail.