The arrival of any new Steven Spielberg title is an event. It’s just over half a century since Jaws, his masterly second film, transformed the way commercial cinema was made and marketed.
It would be insane to argue that his subsequent near-golden run through to the mid-1980s continued for another 40 years, but, though there have been significant troughs, the great entertainer has always come back swinging.
This week he returns to alien visitation with Disclosure Day, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Eve Hewson, Colin Firth and Colman Domingo. Where will it sit in any future ranking?
We include only those features that received theatrical distribution. Duel, made for TV but screened in European cinemas, makes it in. Murder by the Book – opening episode of Columbo, the greatest cop show ever made – does not qualify, but we would mischievously place that 1971 small-screen classic around number 18 in a more forgiving parallel selection.
34. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Unspeakably dumb sequel to the 1992 smash that – we can say little more damning – plays as if farmed off to a much lesser director. Still better than the recent Jurassic World trilogy.
33. Hook (1991)
Too many directors have come unstuck tackling Peter Pan for the big screen. Borderline-stunt casting – Dustin Hoffman as Hook, Robin Williams as Peter, Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell – can’t save a doomed project.
32. The Terminal (2004)
He means well. Keep saying that to yourself as you suffer this weedy yarn about Tom Hanks’s oddball refugee trapped at JFK airport. Beyond twee.
31. The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
It has its fans. But the uncanny-valley motion capture does no favours to this soulless assault on Hergé’s timeless bande dessinée about the flick-fringed Belgian sleuth. Justifiably forgotten.
30. Amistad (1997)
Drab take on the real-life trial of the brave African men who, in 1839, launched a rebellion while being transported into slavery on the titular ship. Djimon Hounsou and Anthony Hopkins work hard, but, once again, meaning well ain’t enough.
29. 1941 (1979)
Maybe the only point in this story when Spielberg’s career looked in danger. Arriving between Close Encounters and Raiders, this chaotic comedy was (contrary to reputation) only a modest flop, but for a moment it cast doubt on the golden touch.
28. Ready Player One (2018)
Spielberg’s take on Ernest Cline’s exhausting novel – a melange of video games, movies and other high trash – has tolerable enough energy, but the director doesn’t have the postmodern touch.
27. The BFG (2016)
Launched to polite yawns out of competition at Cannes, Spielberg’s take on a Roald Dahl classic is a bit too cosy for its own good. Mark Rylance is fine as the titular giant.
26. War Horse (2011)
Pretty. Well acted. Sincere. But Michael Morpurgo’s adored novel – adapted brilliantly for the stage by the National Theatre in London – deserved a little more grit and irony.
25. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Remember the South Park episode that tore the belated fourth Indy film to shreds? It ends with a bemused Butters saying: “I thought that movie was pretty good.” That’s me. It’s not great. But it’s not terrible.
24. Always (1989)
This remake of an old Victor Fleming flick is pleasurable enough – Richard Dreyfuss plays the ghost of an aerial firefighter – but one still can’t see why Spielberg bothered. Notable for Audrey Hepburn’s final role.
23. War of the Worlds (2005)
Nobody has yet produced a film of HG Wells’s great 1897 novel set in its original time or location. Spielberg’s take is a nippy enough contemporary romp with fraught Tom Cruise and charming Elle Fanning.
22. The Color Purple (1985)
An unmistakable lunge for adult respectability, Spielberg’s take on Alice Walker’s novel still shares the record for most Oscar nominations – it had 11 – without a win. He later admitted that he softened this robust tale of African-American life.
21. Minority Report (2002)
This Philip K Dick adaptation throws an excellent cast, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton among them, at the tale of a future where citizens can be arrested for crimes they have not yet committed. Passes the time well enough.
20. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Indy fans maybe go on too much about the blood and gore in episode two of what, for a while, seemed like a trilogy. A fast-moving romp with a stripe of carnival cruelty.
19. AI Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Famously developed from a script once intended for Stanley Kubrick, this lavish film does impressively creepy work with Haley Joel Osment’s lonely cyborg kid. Unfortunately, the central meander is a tad dull.
18. The Post (2017)
It’s not quite All the President’s Men, but Spielberg’s study of the Washington Post’s involvement with the Pentagon Papers scandal is gripping, educative and beautifully acted by renowned names that include Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.
17. Bridge of Spies (2015)
The master’s treatment of the legal efforts to free Gary Powers, a downed CIA pilot, from Soviet captivity is rich in procedural detail and period colour. Mark Rylance deservedly won an Oscar for his turn as the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
16. West Side Story (2021)
The most common criticism of Spielberg’s dynamically shot take on an imperishable musical was that, after the 1961 film, it was unnecessary. Nobody says that of the many stage revivals. Ariana DeBose was another warranted Oscar winner as Anita.
15. Jurassic Park (1993)
Too low? This film is a technical marvel – the computer-generated dinosaurs broke new ground – but, unlike, say, Jaws, it works only fleetingly at the level of character. A great afternoon out, nonetheless.
14. Catch Me if You Can (2002)
Gorgeously sleek entertainment about Frank Abagnale, a suave charmer who, from the late 1970s, conned his way throughout the United States. Christopher Walken is in impressively ambiguous form as the anti-hero’s father.
13. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Spielberg closes out the decade that – maybe with Madonna – he made his own. The first three Indiana Jones films hop along without taking a breath. Sean Connery is adorable as the hero’s dad.
12. The Sugarland Express (1974)
Spielberg’s proper theatrical debut is the only one of his films to have competed at Cannes and the only one to have won a prize there. It’s a terrific chase movie that doesn’t quite point where its director was headed.
11. Duel (1971)
Lean as liver, tight as a balloon, this TV movie stars Dennis Weaver – already famous for the cop show McCloud – as a lone driver pursued by a mysterious truck. Received raves on theatrical release in Europe.
10. Empire of the Sun (1987)
The most underrated film on this list? Spielberg’s interest in childhood wonder is well suited to this adaptation of JG Ballard’s autobiographical novel about a kid detained in a Japanese camp during the second World War.
9. The Fabelmans (2022)
It’s striking how closely Spielberg sticks to his own life story in this yarn about a budding film-maker growing up in mid-century Arizona and California. It’s properly poignant throughout before getting a wonderful jolt in an already legendary last scene.
8. Lincoln (2012)
Intense study of a key incident in Abraham Lincoln’s career that drew a deservedly celebrated Oscar-winning performance from Daniel Day-Lewis. Sally Field is poignantly broken as Mary Todd Lincoln.
7. Munich (2005)
Controversial on release, this tale of Mossad’s response to the Black September attacks on the 1972 Olympics would be harder still to release now. It remains a properly brutal immersion in fruitless violence. His best of the century (at time of writing).
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Yes, nothing later in the film lives up to that opening teeth-rattling assault on the Normandy beaches. Then again, what could? After all that innovation, we still get a solid war drama of the old school.
5. Schindler’s List (1992)
“It’s not an appropriate use of the form,” Michael Haneke said of a famous scene in this gruelling Holocaust tale. Schindler’s List is unquestionably “problematic”, but it is clearly the film Spielberg wanted to make, and it mourns the murdered with notable grace.
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Who knew that the era’s kids desired a retread of forgotten movie serials from the 1940s? George Lucas and Spielberg, apparently. Those film-makers transform the material with their superior contemporaneous craft.
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Still a remarkably odd film. Not because it ends with an alien visitation. More because its focuses on a man – the Spielberg fave Richard Dreyfuss – modelling a mountain in mashed potato. As much a study of familial angst as a science-fiction flick.
2. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Why is “manipulative” seen as criticism? Spielberg’s singular tale of a young boy and his pet alien is certainly that. It is also among the most ruthlessly moving family movies in the medium’s history. If you don’t blub then you’re not human.
1. Jaws (1975)
The first of three Spielberg films to become the highest grossing of all time, this propulsive adaptation of Peter Benchley’s tawdry novel is, clunky mechanical shark aside, a perfectly realised exercise in high tension. The nuanced characters are at least as important as the liberally scattered viscera.
Disclosure Day opens in cinemas on Friday, June 12th, with previews from Wednesday, June 10th
