When people are asked about this film Jaws nowadays, most will respond with “It’s about this shark...” Next thing they would reminisce would be the unforgettably chilling soundtrack, and then would finally say that it was directed by this man called Spielberg. It should be the other way around. When Jaws will be mentioned, it should be Spielberg at the top of the line, creating a solid monster movie that landed him into the entertainment masterclass. He made this “shark film” so great that even though there was the B-movie written all over it, now decades later film associations are considering it one of the best movies of all time. Of course, it became a landmark in cinema history; it’s the shark movie that launched a thousand other shark films.The plot is simple. Even the little kids would find this too easy to comprehend. Amity town is located near the beach and tourists flock to the wonderful sands. However, something was plaguing the waters; there were series of attacks of swimmers involving a great white shark. As the film starts, we see camping teenagers in the beach and two lovers running after one another into the sea. In both such a stunning and brilliant shot, one of the most creative scenes in the film, was when the girl swam into the deep and then we, the audience, sees her shouting for help, being carried away by something under that got her feet (or the whole half of her body). This was where Spielberg knows how to create tension; if he was to make a monster movie, he should have made that shark emerge and swallow the whole girl whole – but he didn’t; he must have understood that it’s not only a shark movie he was making, but a kind of uneasy thriller that would make audience grip their seats while they’re at it. The whole Amity town was scandalised to find out that a girl was missing, and Brody (Roy Scheider) the local police chief reckons it was a shark that killed her, ordering the whole beach to be closed from public. The beach resorts thundered, not agreeing to the fact that their businesses would be on hiatus in the eve of summer holidays. In a blend of comedy, great sense of humour, action, adventure and thrilling fun – Jaws becomes an epic splash of townie adventure movie brilliant for the whole family. The fantastic chase of the three men, Brody, Quint (Robert Shaw), who has personal grudges with sharks including his foul-mouthed nature, and Hooper (the most likeable and entertaining performance by Richard Dreyfuss) as the rich-kid arrogant oceanographer.
The characters were all wonderfully caricatured, and the dialogues between them were very playful. Dreyfuss was the one that really brings the laughs, watch out for his child-like tongue-out expression on his face when he was annoyed by Quint. But it was Brody in which we normal people could connect to; he’s terrified of the sea, doesn’t like to go swimming into the deep and easily troubled.
More importantly, Spielberg knows how to use his camera. One of the most amazing scenes in the film was when Brody was sitting in the sunbed, looking over the sea while a man was talking in front of him. The camera blurs the man in front of him, and focuses into the sea, as if we the audience could actually take a glimpse if there’s something swimming around aside from the town folks. Which leads us to the shark; it would have been more graphic if we the shark always, tearing people apart, but Spielberg reduces the shark’s appearance by sticking into his storyline and the events above the sea level. The shark was never overused, and the most brilliant thing was, we absolutely know that there a shark swimming around somewhere only that we need to wait for its next feeding.
I love Jaws, and it’s one of those films that would stay with us as we grow up. Until now, I’m still fascinated by John William’s scary musical score, not easily forgotten. Aside from the fact that even adults are entertained, it’s a kind of film that we must let the children see while they’re still young, for in memory it will remain and when they grow up and asked about the brilliant movie they had seen as a child; they would say “Yeah, I’ve seen Jaws.” And what’s more even brilliant when a kid doesn’t first utter that it’s a film about this shark, but rather say it was made by this guy called Spielberg.
Rating: A
When your idea of proving one's manhood is going out to the world, spreading violence, and joining an underground gung-ho fighting society, then this film is just right up at your alley. But if your idea of a correct film should be both politically and sociologically upright in its context, then Fight Club is your worst enemy.
Once there was a film that became a landmark in American cinema that sparked the future eruption of a new genre: the romantic comedy. Brilliantly directed, influentially made, and performances that echoes throughout the history of film, The Graduate is that fine gem in a king's crown, surely making Mike Nichols still smirking in pride until today.
Not for the first time I felt cheated by a supposed-to-be moving story of love and loss since there had been a lot of films who had done the treachery. Especially if one of those film had amassed seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, and starred two of Hollywood's star-power. Out Of Africa, is for instance, a great film with breathtaking cinematography, one that's a landmark back in the good 'ol 80's, and dazzles an epic scope of love story against lush landscapes but instead of moving us at the end of the film - well, it left me motionless.
Which is more horrific: being chased by a man possessed by a ghost, or being chased by a man in which you truly know that he wasn't possessed by any entity but himself alone? Both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick posed to ask the questions in this adaptation-to-big-screen horror classic The Shining. It's such a shame, and an embarassment to frustrated movie critics like me for not having watched this film an earlier time (especially during those childhood years when we're easily spooked by horror tales), that I have seen this in a such an age unfitting for horror-movie viewing. I'm not easily spooked anymore, and if I watch a horror film, it should be at least hardcore enough to scare the wits out of me, or even make me jump a bit. Slasher flicks don't appeal to me anymore, and I find recent remakes so rubbish that they belong to the dump and not to the theaters. However, The Shining, is an exception. It's not a physical screaming type of film, as though you're shivering in fright and real, unadulterated terror, but more on the psychological distress that only a few horror movies succeed to bring to the edge. The Shining is disturbing not by the fact that a kid and his mother was stuck in a big empty hotel on a winter night being chased by their own father with a big pick-axe supposedly possessed by a ghost, but by the idea of stripping the ghost story from it and just leave the scene with the father possessed by no one and butchering his family to death.
If The Golden Compass felt like a game of loyalty and betrayal, the tests of friendship and free will, and The Sutle Knife was a maze of interconnectedness, family and the marks of destiny - The Amber Spyglass at its core is a poignant, moving story about sacrifice, the need to fight for what we believe in, and the cruelest things that we need to do in order to heal the common good. Philip Pullman's final tragic book in His Dark Materials trilogy is one of the most powerful books I've ever read in my whole life. His impressionistic vision and re-vision of Milton's Paradise Lost in his majestic finale will impale a great thorn in your heart that for weeks, this series ending would still haunt you. If you are reading this book, make sure you grab some tissues because by the time you will finish it, human as we are, it might move you to cry.
The second book in Philip Pullman's highly-engrossing fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials is a great big slap to most sequels, especially in literature (oh yes, not only in Hollywood do sequels exist - in books too you numbskull sequel-mongers). Continuing from the first one, Northern Lights (UK edition original title) and The Golden Compass (from the American title-changers!), The Subtle Knife is a wonderful staging for the bigger event for the last and final part of the trilogy. As The Golden Compass served as the very foundations of the story, introducing us into Lyra Belacqua's parallel Oxford world, this second one laid out the whole plot that there are other worlds aside from our own and served as an entrance to another protagonist aside from Lyra which is William Parry.
Impressive book! Philip Pullman's first part of His Dark Materials trilogy contains the elements that make a great classic. Majestic and grandly written, filled with gripping moments and entertaining imagination. Northern Lights is one of the very rare 21st century books that could edge out fantasy legends like Tolkien, Lewis and Dahl. Imagine dark fantasy, an advanced children's literature, then throw in some fantastic adventures, a feisty and witty heroine, a sturdy Polar Bear King, nasty evil villains, edged with a twist of the recent religious issues written in a very gripping and hard-to-put down style, Pullman's book had suddenly become a J.R.R. Tolkien-J. K. Rowling-Dan Brown masterpiece. Of course, this was compared to history's most successful literature, a personal favourite of mine, the Harry Potter series. I'd like to clarify this: Northern Lights isn't a Harry-Potter-kind-of-read, but it is as great as J. K. Rowling's craft. I would say more realistic than the Harry Potter series. OK, so stupid of me to compare since I really hate to compare things, I mean, why would I compare Harry Potter with His Dark Materials when they're two different stories altogether? Please do excuse my silliness, but I do believe that like Harry Potter, Pullman's book dwells not really on the face of children's literature but more on the young adult field. This is a very dark book. There are murders, blood, PG-13 bear against bear fights, witches against Tartars, children mutilation and so many perilous moments that an eight-year old kid might find horrifying to read. Also, it's a kind of novel that would spark the inevitable questions of 'what-ifs'. If in Harry Potter you would ask, what if there are really wizards and witches hiding from us Muggles, living a completely different lifestyle full of magic and spells? What if there's really a school of witchcraft and wizardry disguised as a ruined castle in the remote mountains of Scotland? What if there's really a magical barrier in King's Cross Station between Platforms 9 and 10, and that Muggles are just to indifferent to notice it? Those are the questions one might ask after reading Rowling's book. But in Pullman's, you'll ask entirely different kind of questions, such as, what if there are other universes existing beneath the world that we know? What if there are windows in our world that could open into a completely unusual place? What if the church was hiding a significant truth from us human beings and why did they silenced so many theologians and scientists from the past who suggested about other worlds? What if there is really another world existing beyond the Northern Lights? And why, of all places, the Northern Lights only shimmer in the North Pole? The book tries to ask so many questions that are most left unanswered, until you hurry into Book 2, The Subtle Knife, the pivotal part of the trilogy. But of course, this is a work of fiction, I'm just too astounded to dwell in the real world right now because I was engrossed by such a magnificent work of literary art. And so far, it's one of the most ambitious work since Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Since this book is one-liner for movie adaptation, I say, this would make a great film too, if properly made stripped out of Hollywood's subservience. However, such a great ensemble of actors will play the characters: Nicoel Kidman as Mrs Coulter, Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala and the newcomer Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra. It will open December 7th, this year.
A book studying one man's dementia will only lead us asking something: will the writer also be possibly prod with dementia while writing the book? The Shining, written by one of America's best fiction writers, Stephen King, is a massively popular ghost-horror story and was adapted into screen by Stanle Kubrick and turned out to be one of the most haunting and well-made horror movies in cinematic history - and if you haven't known what The Shining is all about, then you have probably never existed in this world or was located from Mars, or maybe as far as Uranus.
When one tells you that a movie is made based on the olfactory sense of humans, I was in doubt. But after watching Perfume the film, it satisfied my nosetrils and the whole darkly rich but sinister effluvium of the craft of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the survivor, the genius, the perfumer, and the murderer. But my curiosity left me craving for more and left me with one singular question: what would it feel like reading a book based on scents and fragrances? Would the writer be able to convey and tickle the olfactory sense through the use of words? And so it was, I ogled at the book in which all the sensation was all about.
For thousands of times, I have been trying to define what romantic comedy is really all about. It's boy meets girl (or girl meets boy), try to hate each other at first, say silly words at each other and then at some point in the film, they will realise that they actually like each other and that they share a bit of understanding. So by the end of the film, romantic comedy trademarks, there should be a rushing scene or somebody running catching another i.e. in a train, in a subway, or in an airplane - and the kissing part ensues... awww, group hug. Notwithstanding, it's all pretty predictable.
Many films nowadays strive to encompass the fantastic breadth that was 
I have to admit: Stanley Kubrick's films are head-scratchers. Some of them may be classics, some stupefying, others plain greats but the rest are like numbness to the cerebral cortex. Despite of that, odd and eccentric Kubrick may be, I still adore his craft which heightens into the order of uniqueness and individuality. He has his own style, and when you see a film, you will surely know it's in the "Kubrickian" stratosphere.
In a tale of obsession, usually there's the initiator of dark and twisted desire and the end-receiver who naturally suffers the consequences of being the apple in the Garden of Eden. But what if there's a third party involved in such tale? Just like you're talking to someone in the phone without you realising that there's somebody else furtively listening to your voice, every whisper, every sigh, every word. In 
