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Jaws (25th Anniversary Full-Screen Collector's Edition)

Jaws (25th Anniversary Full-Screen Collector's Edition)

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Oceans Will Never Be The Same..
Review: White Death, Great White Terror and Man-Eater are all names that have entered public vocabulary to describe the Great White Shark, one of the most efficient predators of the oceans.
Yet, surprisingly, only very few people have actually encountered one, and fewer still had had the misfortune of been attacked by one, yet why is it that the name alone is enough to strike terror in our hearts and inspire awe and fascination?
The answer is simple,Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg.
The collaboration of a best selling author and a director at his creative best resulted in one of the all time classics of cinema, an original film that has spawned dozens of imitations, and one responsible for keeping a lot of viewers out of the waters for a while, afraid of Jaws.
The success of Jaws is due to many factors, all as important:
The direction of Steven Spielberg is flawless, pushing the right buttons at every turn, starting with one of the best ever opening scenes in cinema history, then keeping the suspense brewing till amazingly appx. the 81st minute before the shark shows its toothy grin! The fact that this 'monster' was unseen for the largest part of the movie was a genuis decision from Spielberg and contributed to tickling our imagination, and increasing the tension.
The acting was another factor to Jaws's success,
Spielberg could not have chosen to cast better actors for his film:
Roy Scheider,the reluctant hero Chief Brody,
Lorraine Gary,the supportive and concerned wife that adds a needed comforting and homely feeling to the film,
Richard Dreyfuss, the scientist that mixes a sense of scientific and logical direction with a much appreciated humour,
and of course, the great Robert Shaw,( interestingly not Spielberg first choice, as he wanted Lee Marvin or Burgess Meredith).
It is by sheer good luck that Marvin and Meredith declined to take this role for varying reasons, for in my opinion no one could have played the experienced, weary and tough fisherman Quint better than Robert Shaw. You just have to listen to his speech about the 1945 Indianapolis shark attacks to know what I am talking about,it is one of the most chilling scenes ever filmed.
The success of Jaws is also due to the soundtrack.
Surely the musical themes of films like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Godfather and Dr Zhivago are instantly recognizable classics the world over, but John Williams score is in a league of its own.
It is an integral part of the movie, as if a character in its own right. The opening strings are not only an accompanying or background tune, but the shark itself!! It gives life to the animal/character like no other music managed to do before or after.
Another element of success lies in the fact that Benchely's book touched a very interesting and sensitive nerve: Monsters that prey on humans.This has always fascinated and scared people since the dawn of history, and many books and tales have imagined countless such monsters in the oceans,mountains or jungles.The fact that people are vulnerable to another predator in an environment they do not or can not tame, have always been a source of fascination and fear.
Of course, the Great White has had a very bad PR because of Jaws, (in reality the Bull and Tiger sharks are far more responsible for attacks on humans than the Great White) something author Benchley has tried to correct years later.But while science has increasingly blown away most of the myths that surrounded this animal for too long, still that name alone and that music will forever give us a cold chill down our spine,look at the ocean with slight aversion, for somewhere down there surely lurks Jaws.
And this is exclusively due to the success of the film and the creative genuis behind it,Steven Spielberg.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Will This Movie Take A Bite Out Of The Box Office?
Review: Imagine this, your boat starts to shake then you see a hole in the side of your boat and then when you think your luck can't get any worse you see a 30 foot great white shark pop-up beside your boat. What would you do? Jaws is a great movie, to find out what they did watch this movie.

First we have the plot. The plot is very interesting because it could really happen. It looked like this movie was real and they taped it. When I watch it I was scared to go into the ocean again. It makes you feel like you're in the movie because it's so realistic.
Similar to the plot the actor's skills were great too. The actors were great because they made the movie really believable. I felt like all of this really happened the actors were great and played their parts well.
Next we have the special effects were o.k. The shark was somewhat believable but you could tell it wasn't real. But besides that, the blood and gore was very realistic.
Last there was the music, which was great and went along when the movie very well. When the music was scary I was scared and when the music was happy I was happy. The music added a lot more suspense and over all made the movie a lot better.

I would give this movie a four out of five because everything was great besides the special effects were great. If the special effects were good I would of gave it a five out of five.

I would recommend this to people who like sharks or scary movies. But if you scary easily or don't like to see blood I wouldn't watch this because it's scary, gory and has a lot of profanity.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: THE BEST SUMMER MOVIE OF ALL TIME
Review: I don't think anybody that goes in the ocean today can not help but think of the music of JAWS!! This time Hollywood made a great movie from a so-so book! A shark has attack and killed people on the beach! Then After a 3rd victim it becomes a showdown at sea!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Definetely the best
Review: THis incredibly successful monster flick spawned three sequels, none of which did half as good.
Jaws starts of with one of the best beginnings for a movie I've seen. CHrissie and her recently met friend go for a swim, but he's too drunk to go in with her. She swims far out, is pulledn under and starts screaming.
THe next day, the police chief Martin Brody, Roy Scheider discovers half of her body on the beach.
And so begins his depserate attempt to get the mayor of Amity, played by the late Murray Hamilton to close the beaches and protect swimmers.
IT takes several more deaths, including that of a young boy to get them to see that they need to kill it. Enter Hooper, and Quint. Hooper's a shark expert, and Qint a grisly fisherman who offers to kill the shark, (for a whole lot of money).
THe three go off in QUint's boat, the Orca, to kill it.
THisnmovie has everything, fear, excellent score, great acting, but of course, since it was the seventies when it was made, pretty bad special FX. BUt Steven SPielberg knew how to create fear with simple things, for example, a moving load of wood, being dragged by the shark.
Definetely better than the book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Monster Movie?
Review: In 1975 "Jaws" was a phenomenon. The one theater in Colorado Springs that was playing "Jaws" had lines for every showing for weeks, and the movie was in the theater for months.

The opening moments of this movie became the standard for hosts of low-budget gore-fests to follow, completely missing the style and drama of this movie. Our introductory characters are doing what all young adults do, partying and having fun, never imagining the menace lurking, just, below, the water. The music begins, with the characteristic sequence used by millions to enhance completely unrelated water-cooler conversations, menacing, sending chills up your spine, it's that SHARK MUSIC! Dozens of cheap horror movies have tried without success to copy the opening, yearning to set the stage for the supposed horror to come.

In its own way, this movie combines the drama of "The Old Man and the Sea," with far more action, and the thrill of a well-done monster movie. This movie, while involving a host of protagonists, is ultimately a battle between Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and a great white shark, which represents not only itself, but all Brody's personal demons.

It's amazing that a mechanical shark could generate such terror. Watching how the movie was made, it's relatively easy to see that the shark was mechanical. Stephen Spielberg used clever camera work in combination with the intensity of each shark appearance to keep your focus on the story and being held in suspense, completely ignoring whatever flaws there may have been in his excellent mechanical monster. Furthermore, the shark inspires fear not by crude use of blood and entrails being swallowed or floating in the water, but by frothy water and its sudden, yet anticipated, appearances, with a bit of red-coloring to bring out your worst fears.

What enhances the terror of the shark attacks is that they occur at a public beach, where millions journey each year. Shark experts Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Quint (Robert Shaw) provide all sorts of true information regarding sharks to give you the picture that they are mindless killing machines (though that is an extreme exaggeration). The audience knows what's coming, and yet the innocents on the beach insist on throwing themselves into harm's way.

The final sequence in the movie is excellent, and provides an inexorable buildup to the climax, fast yet slow. This sequence also provides what is probably the goriest portion of the movie. In the end, as in many dramas, the battle is between Chief Brody and the antagonist, the shark. Can Chief Brody conquer his fears? How will he do it? The suspense is just killing me! Here comes the SHARK!!! LOOK OUT!!!

This movie is still suspenseful and well worth watching more than 25 years after its release. One of the best monster movies ever, and just enough basis in reality to be considered a drama as well. Five stars for a movie you can watch over and over again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best horror movie ever made
Review: Even after 25 years, after an endless succession of sequels, parodies, and intertextual references, it is easy to see why this became the highest grossing movie in history, and it remains the best horror movie ever made. And it's not because of the shark -- though the shark is big and scary, providing much more heart-pounding suspense than some guy in a hockey mask slicing up campers.

It's because of the trio of precisely realized heroes drawn from Moby Dick -- Martin Brody, the by-the-book Ishmael with a troubled past, who hates water but lives on an island; Matt Hooper, the effervescent shark-chasing Queequeg, who offers Brody a chance for salvation; and Quint the sea-chanty singing Captain Ahab. Their bonding is intense and exhilerating, and at the end of the movie one feels that Brody has finally been redeemed, and Hooper has finally found a home. There are dozens of wonderfully-drawn minor characters, like the stammering mayor or the dumpy housewife whose son is eaten by the shark, and Amityville is a character in its own right, beautifully photographed and absolutely real -- its nice to see a beach for once populated by actual people, not gym-toned eye candy.

The movie ages well, with only a bit of slang and some ludicrous leisure suits to place it in the 1970's. The DVD could use more extras: there are hundreds of rather dull production photos, a few shark facts, and a short documentary, but the best horror movie ever made needs a full scene-by-scene commentary.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Classic
Review: Jaws is one of those movies that gets better the more you watch it.

But all of the sequels to Jaws were irreverent, since the scripts were forced.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Where's The Rest of the Beef?
Review: In an age where everyone and their mother knows the basic plotline of JAWS and has seen this classic at least half a dozen times, I was very disappointed when I picked up this Collector's Edition to discover that half of the supplemental documentary was excised. These days, seeing 2-disc special editions is a norm, but back in 1998, more than one disc in a package was unheard of. So in order to be able to cram the entire movie, trailers and the documentary onto one single disc, the phenomenal 2-hour making-of documentary (directed by Laurent Bouzereau) that was produced for the JAWS: SIGNATURE COLLECTION Laserdisc in 1995 was condensed to a 50-minute "featurette." I really, really hope Universal takes heed to the cries of foul from the fans and re-releases this title one day as a 2-disc set, restoring many wonderful recollections that were cut out of the DVD's documentary (including Roy Scheider's recollection of the infamous night the entire cast and crew had a massive food fight and then all jumped into a resort pool to wash themselves off). Luckily, I still have my original laserdisc set and can see this documentary in all of its nostalgic glory. I'm very surprised Spielberg let them cut that much out, but being released in 1998, it was still the birth of DVD and thus forgiveness can be bestowed. This is why I give four stars out of five...four stars for the film masterpiece, zero stars for the extras. Universal, please give us fans what we want! Restore your original grand homage to one of the great contemporary cinematic classics!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: jawsmovie review
Review: This is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is enjoyable to watch and it never once is boring. The acting is great, and yes I know this movie is a kind of old and the shark does look a little fake, but who cares. One of the funnest movies to watch.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not quite up to the level I expected
Review: Maybe I'm being overcritical. The film is as great as it ever was; particularly with the clarity of DVD, but I was expecting more "bang" from the DTS version. I realize that only so much can be done with a 25 year old film and is is not a recently made action film in which you have to have a massive floor-ratteling explosion every 5 minutes or so. My main comment is that DTS did not do much more for this film than the Dolby 5.1 surround sound.


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