Steven Spielberg is often hailed as the inventor of the "event movie" or the creator of modern intellectual property dominance, where genre properties overshadow film stars. However, this description falls short. He came of age during the American New Wave but belonged neither to that movement nor to the preceding golden age studio system. Instead, he synthesized both into a directing style that was audacious and fluent, drawing on subversiveness while maintaining a classical orientation rooted in his love for and alienation from all-American suburbia. This makes him the Edward Hopper or Andrew Wyeth of cinema. Notably, he cast François Truffaut, the most Hollywood-friendly French New Wave master, in a cameo in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Spielberg's early achievement was an evolutionary sea change, reinvigorating pulp-popular themes with new maturity and mainstream credibility. Ideas like a giant shark with a taste for human flesh or dinosaurs in an amusement park, once relegated to low-budget schlock, became state-of-the-art productions. In Jaws and Jurassic Park, his digital dinosaurs were gasp-inducingly real, and his shark was a compelling villain, though the mechanical fake shark was barely shown. Instead, John Williams's two-note musical theme became the shark, making audiences imagine and fear it. Similarly, adventure stories set in exotic locations, once the domain of Saturday morning serials, became the lifeblood of theaters through his partnership with George Lucas.
Spielberg possesses an almost supernatural sense for audience expectations, knowing how to elicit gasps, cheers, and applause. In films like Lincoln, West Side Story, Bridge of Spies, and War of the Worlds, he revived great ideas and figures with rapturous verve. He created one of cinema's greatest battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan and tackled racism in Amistad and The Color Purple. His masterpiece, Schindler's List, addressed the Holocaust with absolute seriousness, finding a candle-flame of hope in darkness. In his late classic, the autobiographical The Fabelmans, he confronts antisemitism and shows a protagonist editing evidence of his mother's affair while making a home movie.
Duel (1971)
Peter Bradshaw: Spielberg's great debut, made for television, electrified George Lucas. It is myth-making reduced to an elemental core: a contest between good and evil with no backstory. Dennis Weaver plays an everyman executive named Mann, driving solo through California. When he overtakes and honks at a truck, the driver decides to kill him. With only the desert landscape, Spielberg conjures pure fear.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Edgar Wright: This film shaped my love of cinema. I first saw it at age seven in 1981, and it made me aware of film-makers. The teaser promised a team-up from the makers of Jaws and Star Wars, and it delivered. As a film-maker, I see it as a masterclass in pacing, blocking, and suspense. It's 115 minutes of pure popcorn perfection.
West Side Story (2021)
Scott Tobias: The question "Why remake it?" was answered by Spielberg's thrilling revitalization of the movie musical. With fluid choreography and Tony Kushner's script, it brings balance to the Puerto Rican side and adds period context.
Minority Report (2002)
Gwilym Mumford: A gloriously grubby aberration in Spielberg's filmography, leaning into Philip K Dick's paranoid style. It features Tom Cruise and kinetic set-pieces like hiding from surveillance spiders in an ice bath. It's the jewel of his most underrated era.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Joseph McBride: Spielberg's most personal vision, with its dysfunctional family, need for escape, and lyrical poetry. It upended cold war sci-fi norms by making aliens benign, stemming from Spielberg's empathy with outsiders.
The Terminal (2004)
Stuart Heritage: One of Spielberg's sweetest films, about a man forced to live in an airport. The colossal set gives Spielberg control, and Tom Hanks's character mixes sweet and stubborn. Stanley Tucci shines as the airport official. It's his most human work.
1941 (1979)
Anne Billson: Not a financial flop but underperformed. Stanley Kubrick thought it should be drama, not comedy. Once you stop expecting laughs, absurdity kicks in. It's an orgy of slapstick destruction, with elements that haven't aged well, but it's Spielberg with his id exposed.
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Sasha Mistlin: A masterclass in directing actors. Leonardo DiCaprio became Leo, and Christopher Walken gives a bruised, unshowy performance. It's Spielberg's closest thing to a Christmas movie, with two lonely men committed to the chase.
Schindler's List (1993)
Andrew Pulver: The first large-scale Hollywood attempt to depict the Holocaust. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes give brilliant performances. Spielberg edited Jurassic Park in the evenings while making this. It's still his most consequential and meaningful film.
ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Ryan Gilbey: One of five near-perfect movies from Spielberg's early career. It distills his themes into one rapturous vision. The opening is dialogue-free, and the film is slow and soulful, like an intimate indie drama with an alien. Our tears are honestly earned.
AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Ann Lee: A profound darkness at its heart. Haley Joel Osment is unnervingly creepy and vulnerable. The film, handed from Stanley Kubrick to Spielberg, is a chilling dystopian fairytale about grief and loss.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Simran Hans: Spielberg at his commercial peak. The film grapples with a God complex and ambivalence about franchising. It's a perfect all-ages blockbuster with humor, wonder, and terror. For me, images like a white goat and a rippling cup of water evoke childhood.
Jaws (1975)
Catherine Bray: The perfect shark film, but you could remove the shark and still have a compelling study of a 1970s holiday resort. Every frame could be a short film. Spielberg achieved this at age 26, with a great script and editing. Cut the shark, and you have a Robert Altman movie; add a shark, and you improve it.
