Here’s a weird piece of information. My uncle thought that dolphins were aliens from another planet. He thought that they were smarter than humans. Now bear in mind, this is a man that every Christmas would pass out in our armchair, drooling Carlsberg Special Brew from the corner of his mouth as he respired loudly while wearing a silly paper hat. I’m not saying that alcohol may have prejudiced his thinking, but...

Regardless of whether you think dolphins are Flippers from Mars or not, you have to admit that they’re pretty cool. They swim in the ocean, they protect sailors from sharks and Krakens, they make sick children and fat Floridians smile, they jump through hoops, they help the Navy. Is there anything dolphins can’t do?

Well, aside from writing literature and running the 100m, it seems like dolphins’ greatest failure is not escaping the clutches of the Japanese.

Ah, the Japanese. They’ve given us so many great things over the years – quality electronics, cars and videogames, and of course Kurosawa, Mishima, Ozu and Maru. But on the opposite end of the spectrum they’ve given us humiliation TV and lots of depraved porn; sickening stuff that’s so ashamed of itself that the cocks have spontaneously self-pixelated. Honestly, if I were a cute young girl on a Japanese train wearing an innocent little blouse and plaid skirt, I’d be worried that the very second that the doors closed a hundred blurry penises would be thrust in my face.

Japan’s also a nation that seems determined to eat and kill everything in sight. They harpoon whales and slaughter horses with reckless abandon. And then for a real good laugh, they spear some dolphins.

It takes a while to get to it, but the final part of The Cove packs a fair wallop. After lots of bullshit from various people (there’s talk about being able to scientifically kill the dolphins – apparently they can be killed with a single blow), we see how it really happens. Men in boats with spears methodically stab the dolphins. There’s no science to it. There’s no method. Men just hack and stab at the water until everything stops moving. But it takes a long time to achieve this. The water turns red and dolphins thrash in the water. It seems like the stupidest, most barbaric, most inefficient way to kill something.

The only reason that this footage is captured is because of the work of a group of individuals who decide to expose the killing that is taking place – the slaughter occurs out of sight and anyone who tries to take a look is either intimidated or encounters physical violence. It takes an undercover operation to bring it to light.

The surveillance operation feels like part spy thriller, part heist movie. There’s lots of night-vision and there’s more than one close call. In one scene, as the guys and girls bug the cove, some guards come along to intercept them. The way it’s filmed, you’re never quite sure how close the guards get, but the scene certainly gets the pulse racing. After all, this is a country that legally allows its police officers to torture suspects, so you can more than understand their rush to get out of Dodge.

One reason why the movie feels so much like a spy thriller is because the movie industry actually gets involved with the operation – a number of the team are special effects guys. So they deploy all kinds of cool ways of bugging the cove. My favourite are the cameras that are hidden in fake rocks that are planted in the cliffs.

But the real hero of the picture is Ric O’Barry. Formerly a dolphin capturer and trainer, and largely responsible for the success of the TV show Flipper, he’s turned his life around and now works to free captive dolphins. Largely responsible for this transformation is his belief that one of the real life Flippers committed suicide in his arms – unlike humans, dolphins have to consciously choose to breathe and the one in question just decided to stop. Understandably, this devastated him and he’s been a changed man since.

When we first see Ric O’Barry, he seems crazy. He wears masks over his face, he’s paranoid about cars following him and he’s constantly shifting back and forth. But it quickly becomes clear that this paranoia is justified. Harassed at every turn by policemen and angry fishermen, he survives through a sheer act of will. It’s truly impressive to see a man that is this dedicated to his cause. O’Barry won’t be intimidated and he won’t be swayed. Time after time men try and provoke him into reacting against them so that they can get him locked up, but he stays strong. And in some parts it even becomes amusing. For the hundredth time some cops decide to have a chat with him. They want to know whether he’s working with anyone to expose the activity in the cove but instead he starts talking about mercury levels. It’s obvious that they’ve heard this hundreds of times before and rather than listen to him again they quickly make their excuses and leave. It’s a brilliant piece of chess from O’Barry – he plays up to his image as a crackpot in order to protect everyone else.

But the mercury point is a big issue. Dolphin meat contains large levels of mercury and is poisonous to humans. And yet a Japanese school feeds its children dolphin meat and packets and packets of the stuff finds its way onto supermarket shelves. Anyone who eats it is slowly being killed.

The majority of the populace seems to be unaware of the dolphin killing practice but the politicians jealously protect it. They claim that it’s a form of pest control. In reality, it’s because the activity makes money – any dolphin that can be trained can fetch up to $150,000 and the rest can be slaughtered and sold for meat. And Japan gets away with it because they buy votes at the International Whaling Commission and because they don’t listen to what anyone else says.

The bubble is burst, though, when O’Barry bursts into a meeting with a video screen strapped to his chest. The video shows footage of the slaughter and O’Barry makes sure that everyone sees it. It brilliantly cuts through the bullshit and it rams the point of the movie home. There’s no ambiguity or objectivity here. This practice is fucking wrong.

Here’s a question for you. How does a man get transported to an alien planet where he’s hunted for sport and still manage to put on weight? It seems to me that being a human fox in a place that has a total absence of Popeyes and Wendy’s would be a recipe for weight loss, not weight gain. But then I guess I hadn’t figured on the gluttony of Laurence Fishburne. Apparently nothing will get in the way of him and his stomach.

Fishburne plays an Air Cavalry veteran who was kidnapped by the Predators and now hides in an abandoned spacecraft. He’s been stuck there for years and has lost his mind. Well, as you would if you were being hunted daily by giant aliens with dreadlocks and you faced the dire future of never visiting Tops Diner again for their wonderful Top of the World Burger. But Fishburne’s madness isn’t exactly subtle. He has crazy eyes and talks to himself. Presumably he spends all day trying to order a Double Down with no success.

Considering the fame of the actor and his prominence in the marketing campaign, I thought that Fishburne was going to be a main character, but no sooner does he turn up than he gets killed. However, there is an amusing scene where he tries to kill the humans that he’s harbouring in his spacecraft. He says to himself that he can’t feed all these mouths (yes, there is nothing a fat bloater fears more than the prospect of precious food entering a skinny fuck’s undeserving gut) and then tries to smoke them to death. Yeah, you heard me right. He tries to smoke them to death. No burning. No bashing. No blasting. I guess he’s trying to cook them. After all, if you’re in space with no Baconaise or Donut Burgers, what better treat than some human flesh? It must make a welcome change after eating nothing but bits of spacecraft and your own poo.

On the other hand, there are Predator Dogs that he could eat. But these creatures don’t look especially tasty. They’re full of giant tusks that would gouge your eyes out and rip your nose off if you decided to be overly zealous and ate one without having a hacksaw handy. Hell, now that I think about it, how the fuck do the Predator Dogs eat their prey? How are you supposed to get something’s flesh in your mouth when you have a giant tusk blocking your gob? Complete design nonsense.

Not that the action scene featuring the Predator Dogs is anything to write home about. A bunch of these poorly rendered beasts chase the antagonists (a motley assortment of the world’s best killers) and then get killed by machine gun fire. But what makes the scene laughable is in the way that the dogs get killed. There’s a bit where a Russian with a mini-gun shoots at one of the animals for like five seconds and doesn’t even hit a dog running straight at him. These guys are worse shots than the A-Team.

To be honest, none of the action is particularly spectacular. It ranges from ho-hum gun battles to ponderous Predator fisticuffs to silly sword fights. Yep, there’s one scene where a Yakuza fights a Predator with a katana. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds and it even takes place in a field of barley. Or should that be, Predator barley? Regardless, the scene is preposterous and not at all exciting. And it also seems to me that the Predators have become significantly easier to kill, as the Yakuza guy manages to slay his bigger, stronger foe in one-on-one combat. Fair enough, the Yakuza guy also dies, but the Predators no longer seem to be so fearsome.

Hell, even Adrien Brody manages to decapitate one of the dreadlocked aliens. Although having said this, Brody is no longer the skinny bastard he once was. He has now become uber diesel. It’s quite a sight to behold once we see him without his shirt on. He stands there caked in mud, doing his best Arnie impression, and then proceeds to beat the living shit out of a Predator before eventually decapitating it. It actually ends up being quite awesome, especially as this is an Oscar winning character actor. What next, Paul Giamatti in the next Alien film, slaying xenomorphs with a GShG-7.62 machine gun?

But I don’t know why the film is so coy to show us Brody’s muscles. He obviously worked pretty hard to get them. So why deny us the modern equivalent of the awesome, muscle-bulging Dillon/Dutch handshake? Or the totally over the top but necessary gratuitous jungle-trap-building-scene where the cast ripped their shirts off so that we could have close-ups of bulging muscles as they sweated under the sun? That shit was dope! – as my friend King D would say.

But no, this is a modern film and avoids homoeroticism like the plague (bastards!). So we have a film that is pretty much played straight down the middle. There are no glorious puns, no over the top violence and not a hint of gayness. As such the film is pretty charmless. True, I wasn’t trying to gouge my eyes out like I did when I tried to watch the Aliens vs. Predator films, but it’s nowhere near as fun as the original movie. And it’s probably not even as fun as the second one. Fuck, that film had Gary Busey in it! What does this film have? Topher Grace? And Topher Grace as a serial killer. The less said about that, the better...

Some people argue that Jaws ruined cinema. It was the first massive summer blockbuster and it paved the way for the nonsense that followed - high concept, big budget, fast food movies for people with short attention spans and less than discerning taste. It completely changed the landscape of the movie industry.

Whether you think this change is a good thing or bad thing depends on if you’re a drooling fanboy or someone with a modicum of intelligence. I know there are people who jizz in their pants at every big movie release. They watch the trailers, they read the news on excitable blogs and they go to the opening weekends, crying inside as they realise that the latest future movie classic starring Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson isn’t The Godfather. Hell, it isn’t even The Poseidon Adventure. But despite this they’ll still try and convince themselves and others that it is. They’ll artificially inflate the score on IMDb and they’ll nod in agreement with that fuckwit Harry Knowles. Yes The Dark Time Traveling Matrix of Wonderland was really a life changing experience.

For other folk, summer movie season is a time for despair. A time when nothing decent seems to be showing. But even though Jaws helped usher this in, we shouldn’t think less of the film. Jaws is fantastic entertainment and proof that it’s hard to make a big mainstream flick. Producers these days seem to think that there’s a magic formula, but there isn’t. The vast majority of them aren’t going to make anything that comes anywhere near close to the genius of Jaws.

One of the things that helped Jaws was that the special effects were rubbish. This meant that the filmmakers had to be a little more imaginative about the way that they filmed the shark sequences. They couldn’t just show the rubber Great White right from the beginning; the suspense would have been ruined. Instead we see lots of point of view shots and we get to see the results of the carnage.

Had Jaws been filmed today, we probably would have seen the shark in the very first reel, even if Spielberg had been director. Drunk with the possibilities of CGI, the focus would have been on pointless money shots instead of suspense.

But is CGI even better than the effects we have here? Sure, towards the end, as the shark performs increasingly outrageous acts, the effects look dodgy. Just take the mechanical gnashing as he eats Quint or the shark torpedo as he crashes into the sinking boat in order to eat Brody. The effects don’t look remotely real. But did the effects in Deep Blue Sea look real either? Not at all. And at least here there are one or two amazing shots of the shark. Easily the most effective is the first reveal. The attacks at the beginning are unseen, but during the 4th July celebrations we get our first glimpse of the monster. We see it from above as it goes to attack a man in a small rowing boat. The water is dirty and the shark doesn’t perform any acrobatics, but in this one shot it looks completely real. And it makes the scene quite chilling. The thought that there’s this monster in the water, waiting to eat you, has certainly made me more reluctant to dip my feet in the ocean. That there is a sign of an effective film.

As mentioned before, later scenes with the shark aren’t quite as powerful. For instance, the moment when the shark reveals itself to Brody. Yes it’s a big surprise, but the shark, chomping thin air, kind of looks like it has Bell’s Palsy. Far scarier are the scenes where we don’t actually see the shark but feel its presence. For instance, the scene where Quint talks about the Indianapolis. Now the scene is amazing for many reasons. One of the many reasons I love it is because of the scar contest that the characters have - you can feel the characters bonding and this of course makes you care more about them. But it’s also a great scene because of the sense of dread it fills you with. Quint talks about his ship being sunk after delivering the H-Bomb - trapped in the Pacific waters with rescue a long way away, sharks feed on the men. It conveys far more terror than any of the action scenes and gives all of the characters an added layer of depth. Before this they’re all kind of one note (stuck up policeman, crazy seadog and cynical oceanographer) but after this they all kind of change - they finally realise what they’re up against and you’re more invested in them as people.

Other scenes are a bit more mechanical in the scares they create. A prime example is the scene where Brody and Hooper search for the shark at night. As they travel through the waters they stumble upon the boat of a fisherman. Of course, Hooper decides he has to investigate and dives into the water to check the hull of the boat. As he’s checking it, the dead body of the fisherman leers out. It’s a blatant, shameless attempt to make you jump (Spielberg actually tinkered with it, knowing that he still had one big scare left in the film) but it works like gangbusters.

Something that’s easy to forget when talking about Jaws is how funny it is. The dialogue is incredibly pithy and it helps give the film lots of life and energy. I also like the politics of the film - Brody is helpless in the face of a stupid Mayor who will put money before people. But even though he could be a simple villain, even the stupid Mayor has a little depth to him. He just wants his town and its people to prosper and as such ends up putting lives on the line. In one particularly amusing scene, during the 4th July as the fearful beachgoers remain safely on the sand, he encourages a family to enter the water - it kind of reminded me of when a British politician made his child eat a burger to prove that British beef was safe and that we wouldn’t all get Mad Cow’s Disease. He’s just trying to make sure that the celebrations proceed as normal and that the town has a good holiday season, but his recklessness ends up costing lives.

Another scene that gives me a laugh is the introduction of Quint. In the middle of a typically silly and short-sighted town meeting, he runs his fingers down a blackboard and says that for a sizeable sum of money, he’ll catch the shark –he’s the guy who knows exactly what the problem is and how to solve it. Of course, seeing as the town is run by a shyster who likes to cut corners, his offer isn’t taken up. Once again the Mayor puts money before people.

But Quint is by far the most interesting character in the film. And watching the film for the first time in years, it’s kind of remarkable that he’s only really in the final half of the film. It just goes to show how strong his presence is that he’s the first thing I remember when I think of Jaws.

What makes Quint such a likeable character is how much fun Robert Shaw seems to be having. But this doesn’t mean that Shaw is overacting or playing the buffoon. Quint feels legitimately coarse and dangerous. But at the same time, he also has a nurturing side to him. He helps Brody and even comes to like Hooper (thanks largely to the Indianapolis scene).

Speaking of Hooper and Quint, there’s an excellent class war between the two. Quint represents the working class, learn things through experience ethos, and Hooper represents technology and book learning. Neither of them are wrong, but initially they clash. There’s even an amusing bit where Quint downs a beer in one go and then crushes his can. In response, Hooper downs a paper cup and also crushes it. In some ways, the relationship is even like father and son. Hooper constantly feels the need to prove himself and only after much effort does he gain the respect of the old man.

But like I said earlier, neither of their approaches are wrong. Both experience and technology should be embraced. And Quint eventually learns this. Too bad, though, that he only learns it minutes before disappearing down the gullet of a Great White.

The ending of the film, with Brody literally blowing the shark up, should be completely laughable and preposterous, but somehow the young Spielberg has a way of making even the silliest things both plausible and enjoyable. We shouldn’t root for the destruction of sharks, but you can’t help but clutch the air as this fish explodes into a bloody mess. Somehow man manages to triumph against nature. But man shouldn’t let this success go to his head. The key to our survival is education and intelligence. Although a big gun and a gas tank also come in handy sometimes...