I'm nice now so I thought I'd do you a favour and recommend a couple of films to you.
The first is a film that I beg you to see and implore you to ignore. If you can do both then this is the film for you. It has a dream cast: Mark Hamill, Christopher Reeve, Linda Kozlowski and Kirstie Alley. Could you ask for better? NO! NO, YOU FUCKING COULDN'T SO SHUT UP. The film is Village of the Damned made by John Carpenter, a man who got lucky a couple of times, in 1995 and tells the every day tale of a cloud that rapes women, impregnates them and their children grow up to be blonde. Terrifying. What is more frightening is Mark Hamill as a priest trying to organise a village fete. He's the son of Darth Vader for Christ's sake. At times you can really see the Hayden Christensen in him. Plus you get to see creepy children make grown adults put their hands in boiling water WITH THEIR MINDS and, as pointed out by Tweetolla, this is probably Christopher Reeves final 'walkie'. Recommended (but not very highly).
Jaws is a different matter. I saw it last week for the first time in years and I've thought about it every day since. It has had a huge impact on my life anyway. The first time I saw it was during a family holiday in Dublin when I was six. Basically, I haven't set foot in the sea since. I'm genuinely terrified of the sea and it's Jaws' fault. After my evil parents forced me to watch it when I was just a baby (sort of) I was actually too scared of turning on a tap just in case a 60 foot shark came out (I wish I was making that up but it's true). Sometime in the 90's my then girlfriend, Hairy Maude, persuaded me to go into the sea via a pedalo. The pedalo was in the shape of a smiley duck and, after explaining that I might not be comfortable in the sea, I stupidly got in it. We were six feet from shore when I started to panic. I screamed at her, called her a fucking bitch and, generally, lost all fucking reason. We didn't speak much after that day. It's hard to look at your boyfriend after he's called you a fucking bitch while sitting in a big duck.
The thing is, there's no fat on Jaws. It starts really quickly. There's no slow, mysterious beginning. It just starts. BANG. Naked woman runs to the sea, dives in, gets eaten. That's the first minute of the film done. And the way she dies is just horrible. It's not a cartoony sort of death-by-shark, you can hear her drowning as she struggles to get away from a million razor sharp teeth. Her lungs are filling with water and blood and you can hear and feel every bit of it. Horrible.
All the characters are amazing too. Our hero Chief Brodie's flaws and mistakes are the driving force of it. He is scared of the sea but, hey, he's basically to blame for the death of at least one shark attack victim. That doesn't look good to the rest of the classic Spielberg suburbanites on the island. Can you have suburbia on an island? FIND OUT. Anyway, luckily Brodie has a twat and a prick to help him find and kill the shark. They're a fantastic twat and a brilliant prick, though. The scar-comparison scene on the Orca is classic.
The main thing Jaws has going for it is that it's exciting from beginning to end. When people aren't dying you think they're about to die or they're already dead. That's a lot to constantly take in. Obviously, it would be nothing without good characters and the fact that Brodie is with two shark hunting experts for practically the whole film just lets his character drag it's way out of it's comfort zone. He permanently looks like he'd rather be anywhere else doing anything else while the other two revel in the thrill of the chase. And the shark DOES NOT look shit. You barely see it and when they remake Jaws with a CGI shark you will be mourning the loss of Bruce throughout the entire shitty, forgot-about-the-characters, soulless, Zach Braff led pile of regret.
Recently, I met someone who hasn't seen Star Wars yet. I didn't think that they were stupid for missing the greatest film ever made, I felt jealous that they had this piece of utter perfection still to see. Jaws is the same.
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