Jaws

The iconic music. The stellar cast. The large, animatronic fish. The horror. The absolute horror. All of these elements and more make this my #1 favorite movie of all time. Not quite a horror film, not exactly an action film, not classified as a drama, yet it is perfect in its design to contain and be all three genres at once.

For anyone who has not seen this film, go buy it and watch it real quick. I'll wait.




...Ok, so now that you are blown away, we can continue our discussion. Even if you're cheating and haven't seen it yet, but desire to finish reading this post, I'll enlighten you: Roy Scheider plays a sheriff (Brody) in a small island town called Amity. As his wife and two boys are settling in, something under the water is making its presence known as the world's most unwanted tourist.

Robert Shaw plays Quinn, a salty sea captain who's seen his fair share of shark attacks, and offers to assist Brody in the capture and demise of this great ocean beast (for a price of course), and the two of them set sail with a very young and equally talented Richard Dreyfuss as the college-kid-come-marine-biologist, Hooper.

It's a cat and mouse game from there, one chasing the other at any given time, and ending in a spectacular crecendo of violence, terror and suspense. The great thing about monster movies, in my opinion, is the beast itself. Too little or too much of the beast can ruin a film, but just the right amount and you've got a success.

Spielberg creates a true sense of dread when he just shows a camera moving underwater, as if it were swimming past all these kicking legs and brightly colored bathing suits, just by swaying back and forth and bringing in that subtle 'Da-Dum-Da-Dum' theme music.

He also brings the fear to the screen when the physical shark shows its 400+ teeth and massive jaws (no pun intended) to the camera, and draws you in to think you're death is imminent.

So, why's it my favorite? Well, other than the justification listed above, I'll share it with you. I define a favorite anything as something you can do, listen to, watch, eat, etc. at any given time, no matter your mood. For example, the best album ever made in my opinion is 'Appetite For Destruction' by Guns N' Roses. It doesn't matter what mood I'm in or what I'm doing, if a track from that disc comes on, I blast it and jam out.

Same thing with Jaws. I can flip channels all day long, but if I flick past this movie on TV, I will immediately flick back and finish it from wherever it is in the movie. It really is a classic, and seeing as it almost wasn't made due to budgets and complications, it has stood the test of time.

Jaws is about 2 hours, give or take; rated PG (of course if rated today, it may be PG-13 for the violence).