David Mamet, the great American man of letters, once said: “The genius of Jaws is the ability to terrify us with a shot of empty ocean.” When those yellow barrels pop up, it only adds to the terror, ratchets it up, taking us beyond “simple” storytelling towards multi-faceted layers of myth and mystery, beyond: “What lies beneath?” […]
Tag: roy scheider
A blockbuster in the 1970s meant an entirely different thing than it means today. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) is, plain and simple, a great adventure movie and one of the most effective thrillers ever made: the kind that keeps you on the edge of your seat, getting you to identify with the characters and ask […]
With all the timeliness of a significant planetary alignment it seems only fitting to spy Peter Hyams’ 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) through the telescope of reappraisal, in what is after all the year in which it was set (if you hadn’t noticed), to see if we can spot any intelligent signs of […]