Jaws 3 (1983), was deadlocked with Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) in the poll I held for a live tweet a few weeks ago. Losing out on the honour via a coin toss, I thought I would go back and revisit that film’s predecessor Jaws 2 (1978).

Jaws (1975) is I think my favourite Spielberg film, which is saying something because I think many of his films (though by no means all of them) are modern masterpieces. Before viewing this first of the sequels, I had not heard too much about it which led me to presume it was a rubbish film. However whilst it is quite a different beast to the first film, it is in its own right, pretty bloody fantastic if you ask me.

Where Spielberg’s original was creature feature made into ‘A movie’ thriller brilliance, Jaws 2 unashamedly embraces its status as a B movie. As such, it does not take long for the murderous shark’s spree to start. Actually it is only three minutes into the film before we see the killer at work. The film is also not afraid to be delightfully gimmicky. There is some gratuitous use of the fin and a shark chasing down water-skiers which is all B movie stuff at its best. The film also works on at least one level, because sharks are really fucking scary, and as such there is no shortage of the beast in action. As a result, the shark does not have the same ‘psychology’ if you will as the first film does. The killings are more random and arbitrary in this one. Whilst generally the film is done with a light touch, there are plenty of both intense and graphic moments. Like the best thrillers, the filmmakers here have excelled at building ‘moments’, where you know something big is about to happen, but you are still shocked when it does.

Whilst it perhaps lacks some of the Spielbergian sheen of the first film, Jaws 2 still looks great, the underwater photography being especially noteworthy. One thing that it does have in common with the first film though is John Williams weaving his usual magic with the score and he is masterfully pulling the strings of the audience with his work here. And of course, the music to herald the arrival of the shark ready to feed is once again masterfully done. The script is pretty solid, full of teen summer lovin and the like; and happily Roy Schneider returns in a pretty major role. Without overdoing it, the film also reflects and invokes plot points from the first film, the dodgy and greedy mayor for example. Overall you cannot really fault the technical aspects of the film. In that way it is reminiscent of the classic Universal Monsters films that I have been watching recently. They all show that a concept that seems utterly silly and possibly even daft on paper can be elevated by it being really well made.

Jaws 2 is a sharply made and shot B movie which is vast amounts of fun. Yeah it’s not as good as the original, but it is not even really trying. If you are into creature features done really well and effectively, without taking themselves too seriously, then this is well worth checking out.

Verdict: Pint of Kilkenny  

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Over the weekend, I turned my hand to live tweeting a film from the 1001. After a poll, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) was the film to get the live tweet treatment. This is how it turned out.

As I mentioned during the review, the film is in the Public Domain, so you can check it out right here:

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I think I heard mutterings about a looming Lego based film a while ago. I dismissed them as sounding like a recipe for the worst adaptation in history. Sort of like how Battleship turned out.

But the first trailer is utterly inspired. Check it out below. Maintaining the tone over a feature length film and getting the humour down whilst also obviously keeping it suitable for children will definitely be a challenge. All of a sudden though, as absurd as it sounds, this is one of my most anticipated films of next  year. Here’s hoping it is not rubbish.

Like what you read? Then please like Not Now I’m Drinking a Beer and Watching a Movie on facebook here and follow me on twitter @beer_movie.

I will be live tweeting a film this weekend, so please head here to have your say on what film it should be.

Chucking on the Australian film Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger (2008), I was expecting a pretty light film aimed at teens because it was based on a popular series of young adult novels. Or so I thought. I clearly had the film totally mixed up with something else. Because whilst the film is aimed at (older) teens, it is not particularly light, at least not large parts of it. It is a really excellent film that more people should see though.

The film has a creative and brilliant opening that definitely gets you excited for what is to come. It immediately conveys the utter isolation that being a teenager can bring as the entire school does cartwheels, whilst Esther looks on, totally outside of the group. Small groupings or cliques of teens are a recurring image throughout the film. The film sees Esther, sick of being an outsider at her private school, just piss off and start going to another school. In this case a public school where she is befriended by the much more world wise Sunni, played by Keisha Castle-Hughes who came to prominence for her Oscar Award nominated turn in Whale Rider (2002). The film then chronicles this odd couple as they traverse life inside and outside of school. The film nails much of the maddening pretension that plagues many private schools and just the crippling conformity that is inherent in basically all modern schooling. Thematically it explores some really important issues for teens, but achieves this by making the film feel very real. This is no straight, whitewashed story. Bad things happen here and even the titular character does some highly fuckin questionable things. But everything onscreen is geared really well to the thematic and narrative purpose of the film.

So many films aimed at this market are shot in such a bland manner that the vim in how Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger is brought to life is all kinds of refreshing. There are some great stylistic flourishes from director Cathy Randall, using creative camera angles and some really overt choreography of the characters on screen. The script is wickedly funny but the film is certainly a bit darker than I was expecting. The balance is just about right overall (though a late plot point is misjudged in its bleakness). The characters are also great, each of them feeling different and real. The character of Esther in particular is a great one, a teenager with real sass who is also willing to make mistakes and learn about the world through them. Much of the credit for this must go to the really charming performance of Danielle Catanzariti as Esther. Catanzariti has not been sighted since, but hopefully we can see her onscreen again soon because she is an excellent performer, especially in terms of her comic timing which is incredibly sharp.  She is definitely helped along by the aforementioned Castle-Hughes as well as a supporting cast featuring a bunch of really highly regarded Australian performers, including Toni Collette and Essie Davis.

This film was such a pleasant surprise. It was not particularly well received out here. I’m not sure if like me, people were expecting something a little lighter. But this is a firecracker of a film, really original and well worth your time if you can track a copy down.

Verdict: Pint of Kilkenny

Like what you read? Then please like Not Now I’m Drinking a Beer and Watching a Movie on facebook here and follow me on twitter @beer_movie.

I will be live tweeting a film this weekend, so please head here to have your say on what film it should be.

The documentary The Queen of Versailles (2012) is the kind of film that you start watching assuming it is just going to make you mad as hell. Tis after all a film about a family who are attempting to build the largest house in the USA, not a bunch of people many (or at least me) are likely to warm too or feel too much sympathy for when their dreams go awry. What is delivered however is a little more complex.

Don’t worry, you will feel angry, but you will also feel a bunch of other things as well. The film starts out by recounting the fairytale romance of Jackie and David Siegel. You know that age-old fairytale, the one where the woman is not particularly taken with the man, but eventually falls in love with him simply because he is so infatuated with her. The one where our dashing prince complains that “what she lacks in housekeeping skills, she makes up for in other ways.” I’ll give away how you end up feeling about the characters. He is an absolute, irredeemable jackass. Whilst Jackie is an altogether more sympathetic, complex and ‘real’ person.

The film chronicles their attempts to build their dream home, one that is 90,000 square feet and features amongst other things, a full sized baseball field. In case you had missed it, these are people with a total disconnect from reality. This is a world of inexplicable greed that sheds a light on the so called American Dream. It interrogates the fact that the American Dream is to rise above your ‘status’ and what that means in practice. Although somewhat strangely, or perhaps logically, the kids seem far more normal and world aware than the adults. One particularly insightful teen especially is able to cut through all the bullshit that clouds the world around her. Director Lauren Greenfield does some very clever things elsewhere in the film, showing the death of a pet lizard because no one could be fucked feeding it. This exemplifies the sheer neglect and superficiality that the family has come to impose on its life. As the financial crisis hits the Siegel’s business dealings, David’s true nature comes out, with his bitter tirades become more and more frequent. Jackie though, is able to see behind the surface level of their troubles, recognising the suffering that the situation must be causing others. Furthermore, she is happy that David has been humbled in this way, perhaps hoping that he can learn from it (doubtful).  For all the exceedingly interesting subject matter though, The Queen of Versailles is nothing special in its presentation though which perhaps lessens the impact of the overall film.

The sleazebag David is a strange dude, with all the ego you would expect from a man of his wealth (a wealth unsurprisingly built on a foundation of totally unethical business practices). He enjoys gloating about how he personally got George W. Bush elected, whilst simultaneously expressing some remorse that he did so because of America’s involvement in Iraq. The film shows that David Siegel is not just an exceptionally greedy, sexist and smarmy man; he is in fact a sociopathic and abusive one. The power dynamic that he imposes on his wife is no different to that in other abusive relationships. Whilst all David cares about is money, all that Jackie truly cares about is being loved. She is an extremely astute person but the way she has been treated throughout her life has left her a person who is left struggling to interact with the world around her, try as she might.

The Queen of Versailles is exceptionally good at articulating the patriarchal bullshit and hyper-capitalism that plagues much of the world around us. The Siegels are perhaps an extreme example of this, but unfortunately are probably more representative of the world at large than we would like to admit.

Verdict: Stubby of Reschs

Like what you read? Then please like Not Now I’m Drinking a Beer and Watching a Movie on facebook here and follow me on twitter @beer_movie.

I will be live tweeting a film this weekend, so please head here to have your say on what film it should be.