Director's Spotlight: Steven Spielberg

I think Scorsese, and maybe Hitchcock, is the only filmmaker I've seen more films from than Spielberg. I'm a huge fan, and even listed him as my #6 filmmaker of all time. That's when I wrote this, which I'll just repost as my thoughts here:

Spielberg is one of the few directors pretty much everyone knows by name. That's not always a good thing, since appealing to the masses generally takes a certain blandness to play to everyone. But Spielberg is as much an auteur as any other director. You see the recurring themes of broken families and the resulting stress that occurs, regular people in extraordinary circumstances, or even his ability to induce awe in us. Whether it's the Mother Ship in Close Encounters, multiple moments in Jurassic Park, or E.T. and Elliot flying across the full moon.

Spielberg has probably given us more iconic moments in the pop culture collective consciousness than anyone. And on top of all of that, he's also a great storyteller. Sometimes his movies are too long, but he still generally makes them pop narratively in a wonderful way. He might be the most popular director ever, but that's no reason to be snobby and not include him on a list like this, he's popular with me too.

As for rating and ranking his movies, that'd look something like this:

1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - 10/10
2. Munich (2005) - 10/10
3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - 10/10
4. Schindler's List (1993) - 10/10
5. Jaws (1975) - 10/10
6. Jurassic Park (1993) - 9/10
7. Saving Private Ryan (1998) - 9/10
8. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - 9/10
9. The Color Purple (1985) - 8/10
10. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - 8/10
11. Minority Report (2002) - 8/10
12. Duel (1971) - 8/10
13. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - 8/10
14. Catch Me If You Can (2002) - 8/10
15. The Adventures of Tintin (2011) - 8/10
16. War of the Worlds (2005) - 7/10
17. Empire of the Sun (1987) - 7/10
18. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - 6/10
19. The Sugarland Express (1974) - 6/10
20. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - 6/10
21. The Terminal (2004) - 6/10
22. Always (1989) - 5/10
23. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) - 4/10
24. 1941 (1979) - 4/10
25. Hook (1991) - 3/10