All 34 Steven Spielberg Movies, Ranked (2025)

Steven Spielberg movies run the gamut from lively blockbusters like the Indiana Jones series to more contemplative, grownup fare like Munich and Lincoln. His filmography is formidable: Over five decades, Spielberg has become the world’s most commercially successful director while also winning two best director Oscars. This year is the 50th anniversary of Spielberg’s first big mainstream success, Jaws, a smash hit that changed Hollywood forever. Which seems like a fitting occasion to take a look back at all of Spielberg’s films, and do what only comes naturally to us content producers these days: rank them.

But first, I set a few parameters. Spielberg’s segment of the Twilight Zone movie was out, because it’s pretty short, not very good, and that movie is awfully tainted by tragedy. I am also omitting Spielberg’s made-for-TV movies that didn’t get a theatrical release—so Duel is in, but Savage and Something Evil didn’t make the cut. Which left me with 34 feature films, which I recently spent many hours watching or rewatching in chronological order.

It was a long endeavor, but proved worthwhile. What most struck me while examining the Spielberg canon in full is how different many of his movies look through the prism of his most recent film, 2022’s semi-memoir The Fabelmans, in which a somewhat standard Baby Boomer upbringing in the mid-century suburbs of Arizona and California is knocked off course by depression and divorce. A more thorough knowledge of the director’s origins complicates Spielberg’s signature awe and whimsy, giving a keener understanding of his fascination with war and family and the dark things creeping at the edges of life. That, and being decades older than I was when I first watched many of these movies, had the most significant impact on the rankings below. With that, on to the list.

34. 1941 (1979)

Genre: War, Comedy
Notable cast: Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, John Candy
MPA rating: PG

Perhaps Spielberg’s only genuinely terrible movie. A labored, laugh-less slapstick farce set in the mad days of post-Pearl Harbor Los Angeles, 1941 is also the director’s lone attempt at pure comedy. He fails miserably, delivering one noisy, senseless scene after another. Talented folks like Dan Akroyd, John Candy, Ned Beatty, and Nancy Allen are put to waste, while the supposed charms of John Belushi begin to grate near immediately. Crass and downright stupid, 1941 would be the nadir of any decent director’s career. On Spielberg’s resumé, it’s shocking.

33. Hook (1991)

Genre: Fantasy-adventure
Notable cast: Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts
MPA rating: PG

A mostly joyless movie that Spielberg himself has all but disavowed. One can see the appeal of the premise: America’s great dream-weaver takes a crack at Peter Pan with the help of Robin Williams, an actor adept at both silliness and seriousness. The results, though, are muddled and ugly. Hook begins with some wonder, but that’s quickly scotched when we travel to Neverland, a collection of coldly impressive, ornate sets that house a preening Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman, having fun doing a Jeremy Irons impression) and a bunch of Lost Boys badly updated to fit the cool-kid ’90s. I know this movie has its fans—particularly among adults who were just the right age when it came out in theaters—but 30-odd years later, Hook plays as pointless, half-invested folly.

32. The BFG (2016)

Genre: Fantasy-adventure
Notable cast: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton
MPA rating: PG

Spielberg would seem a good fit for Roald Dahl’s mix of whimsy and menace. In some ways he is, creating a dreamy-sinister nighttime London that is far more evocative than anything in Hook. But the film is also dull and overly reliant on CGI that never looks quite right. While Mark Rylance is effectively mumbly and endearing as the titular giant, his lively performance is not enough to invigorate what might be Spielberg’s most forgotten film.

31. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Genre: Sci-fi action
Notable cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite
MPA rating: PG-13

While it is certainly an unnecessary sequel to a perfect film (more on that later), The Lost World does have a few set pieces that stir the senses, particularly a cliff-side bit of (literal) suspense involving a trailer and a T-rex. But there’s also the dumb San Diego climax, and the dumb gymnastics raptor kick, and Vince Vaughn’s dumb character. Spielberg’s capacity for invention seems stymied by corporate mandate here, as if this film were more contractual obligation than passion project.

30. Ready Player One (2018)

Genre: Sci-fi action
Notable cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn
MPA rating: PG-13

I will admit to being a sucker for a quest narrative, so some of Ready Player One’s mechanics work on me. It’s also interesting to see Spielberg mull over his own place in the cultural firmament, weighing whether slavish devotion to his creations (and those of his friends George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis) is harmless fun or the death of art. The overstuffed spectacle—in both the virtual world and the real one—is something to behold, too. The real problems lie in author Ernest Cline’s text, a veneration of geeky pop-culture fixation so basic it’s embarrassing. If being obsessed with Star Wars and old video games is the path to enlightenment, then Ready Player One needs to explain how we arrived at this particular juncture in human history.

29. Empire of the Sun (1987)

Genre: War, Coming-of-age
Notable cast: Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson
MPA rating: PG

A well-meaning but plodding historical epic, Empire of the Sun follows a young British boy (Christian Bale) whose pampered colonial life in Shanghai is disrupted by the start of World War II. He winds up in a POW camp, eking out an existence that increasingly distances him from his former self. Though the film covers a fascinating subject (based on a true story), its tone and themes never click into place; the sense of occasion that Spielberg is grasping for doesn’t materialize. And, it must be said, Bale’s character is deeply annoying, a precocious kid blithely skipping through an ordeal.

28. The Terminal (2004)

Genre: Romantic comedy, Drama
Notable cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chi McBride
MPA rating: PG-13

This offbeat dramedy has a bad rap, but it’s grown better with age. A post-9/11 movie about immigration and xenophobia, The Terminal moves in peculiar rhythms, trenchant at times and goofy at others. Tom Hanks isn’t the most convincing displaced Eastern European person, but he sells the wily decency of his character. And he has pleasingly sideways chemistry with Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays a flighty flight attendant with old-school moxie. The two true centerpieces of the film, though, are a biting Stanley Tucci as a complexly motivated airport manager and the airport terminal itself, which Spielberg had built in staggering detail after his location search bore no fruit. Only the biggest director of all time constructs a set that massive for a story so quaint.

27. Always (1989)

Genre: Fantasy, Romantic drama
Notable cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Brad Johnson
MPA rating: PG

I’ll admit to some bias here. My family owned a VHS copy of this remake—about a fire-fighter pilot (Richard Dreyfuss) who dies and comes back as something like a guardian angel—when I was a child, so I’ve seen it a zillion times and have a special affection for it. That affection is justified in some ways: the opening stretch of the film is captivating, depicting an interesting world with winning idiosyncrasy. And Holly Hunter is radiant as a tenacious and grieving air traffic controller. But the movie loses lift as it goes, sputtering into a limp and unconvincing romance that never touches the heart. Always is among the most curious of Spielberg curios, a movie that can’t find its way but does some dazzling stuff in the process. Why wasn’t Holly Hunter in a dozen more Spielberg movies?

26. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Genre: Sci-fi drama
Notable cast: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr
MPA rating: PG

And so we arrive at perhaps the most controversial entry on this list. Many people would rank this film much higher—though I wonder if a lot of them have seen the movie recently. Through a 2025 lens, Close Encounters is awfully dull, and has a lead character problem. Richard Dreyfuss does a lot of work to conjure the madness of a man unraveling after an alien encounter, but Spielberg doesn’t do enough to excavate the character and persuade the audience to his passion. The movie is oddly glancing, and thus its intended grandeur is never quite achieved. It may be sacrilege to say, but Close Encounters is perhaps Spielberg’s most over-praised film.

25. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Genre: Action-adventure
Notable cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf
MPA rating: PG-13

I hated this movie when I first saw it. I wanted Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) to stick to religious mystery, not zig into sci-fi alien stuff. But on rewatch, Crystal Skull reveals plenty to enjoy. Cate Blanchett is a hoot as a mind-reading Russian baddie; it’s always great to have Karen Allen back as Marion Ravenwood; and the action sequences are limber and engaging. Sure, the movie pales in comparison to its predecessors, but it serves as a reminder that there are needless sequels made by other directors—and then there are needless sequels directed by Steven Spielberg. He may have fumbled The Lost World, but his love for Indiana Jones gives Crystal Skull the verve required of a near-timeless franchise.

24. Amistad (1997)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Anthony Hopkins
MPA rating: R

August and at times miserable to watch, Amistad is one of several Spielberg films about heroes working within a bad system to save just a few people. It means well and is handsomely mounted, featuring fine performances from Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, and Morgan Freeman. But the courtroom drama, about the lawyers defending a group of West African men and women who waged a bloody rebellion on their slave ship, suffers from the miscasting of Matthew McConaughey and from David Franzoni’s heavy-handed script. Still, it’s a respectable effort that laid the groundwork for Spielberg’s more successful film about American slavery.

23. The Sugarland Express (1974)

Genre: Crime
Notable cast: Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks
MPA rating: PG

Watching it now, one might not immediately identify The Sugarland Express as a Spielberg movie. It’s wirier and shaggier than his films tend to be, working on a relatively small scale to tell a sad little story: Goldie Hawn and William Atherton play a pair of cons the lam, hoping to be reunited with their son and making friends with a captive police officer along the way. Gradually, Spielbergian signifiers emerge, particularly his taste for certain kinds of wide shots and his admirable commitment to giving specific life to the populace of his films. It’s exciting to watch an emerging filmmaker figure that stuff out, preparing himself to swim with the sharks.

22. West Side Story (2021)

Genre: Musical drama
Notable cast: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose
MPA rating: PG-13

A longtime dream project, Spielberg’s remake is staged with passion and reverence—though it does make some bold revisions. Some of those are successful, like the way screenwriter Tony Kushner fleshes out the realities of various characters’ lives. Others, like having a new character (played potently by Rita Moreno, Oscar-winning highlight of the 1961 film) sing “Somewhere” instead of doomed lovers Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler), sap the piece of some of its inherent power. Still, gorgeousness abounds in this alternately lively and somber musical, especially in the long and breathtakingly shot gymnasium dance sequence. That scene should be studied at film schools for all its elegant, dizzying swirl. And Spielberg should probably make another musical before he retires.

21. War Horse (2011)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, David Thewlis
MPA rating: PG-13

War Horse is big and small at once, an epic that traverses hundreds of difficult miles but is made up of short stories. None of those vignettes make much of an impact on their own (though the brief tale of two young German deserters is bluntly tragic), but they do have an effect in aggregate. Who wouldn’t root for Joey, a plow horse, to survive a harrowing war and get back to, well, harrowing? Spielberg was probably always bound to do a World War I movie, and he approaches that grim iconography—trenches and gas attacks and primitive machine guns—with his typical muscle and vigor. All of that is cathartically offset by the lovely, sun-streaked skies of Joey’s home in Devon, filmed with the aching sentiment so signature to Spielberg’s filmography. The miracle is that War Horse, like so many other Spielberg films, stops just shy of schmaltz.

20. War of the Worlds (2005)

Genre: Sci-fi adventure
Notable cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins
MPA rating: PG-13

The most paranoid of Spielberg’s post-9/11 movies, War of the Worlds rattles with dread. Its version of alien invasion is looming and terrifying, from the loud groan of alien craft lurching across the American landscape to the wisps of dust and clothing that remain after a person has been zapped out of existence. Tom Cruise compellingly plays a not-so-great dad forced to keep his children alive as the world around them goes to ruin, cities destroyed and civilization collapsing. Though the deus ex machina ending is a groaner, much of War of the Worlds is an impressively somber, mature display of Spielberg’s maximalist talents.

19. The Post (2017)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson
MPA rating: PG-13

When this movie was first released, it played as a mighty and spirited rebuke to the nascent Trump administration, comparing his attacks on the press to those of Richard Nixon in the wake of the Pentagon Papers scandal. Watching it now, as another Trump administration dawns, it’s hard to feel that same inspiration—the press is in even weaker condition than it was 8 years ago and the bad guy came back to life. Still, the film is plenty engaging separate of present-day context. Tom Hanks is sturdy and workmanlike as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. Meryl Streep, playing Post publisher Katherine Graham, gives one of her most focused and thorough performances of the 21st century, ably commanding a rare Spielberg film that places a woman at the center of the story. Shrewd and rabble-rousing, The Post is high-grade, high-minded entertainment.

18. Duel (1971)

Genre: Psychological thriller
Notable cast: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone
MPA rating: PG

The film that began it all was originally made for TV. But Hollywood was so impressed by 27-year-old Spielberg’s work that they had him shoot some more scenes and cut a new version for theatrical release. It’s easy to see why: Duel is taut and sinewy, telling the simple story of a regular guy in a regular car targeted by the driver of a smoke-belching tanker truck. Motivation is guessed at but never explained as pursued and pursuer race across the mountainous deserts of Southern California. There is some commentary in the movie—chiefly about masculine autonomy, sigh—but Duel is mostly just a relentless chase picture, individual in its cadence and characterization. It’s nice to imagine the people of 1971 leaning closer to their television sets and thinking, “Who made this?”

17. The Color Purple (1985)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey
MPA rating: PG-13

A solid, moving adaptation of Alice Walker’s cherished novel was, at the time of its release, regarded as Spielberg’s first attempt at doing grownup filmmaking. That’s a rather snide view of all that came before, but one can indeed see Spielberg reaching for something new with The Color Purple. There are no special effects, and the adventure is of the interior sort: a downtrodden woman, Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), manages life under the thumb of her cruel husband, Mister (Danny Glover), in early 20th century Georgia. Aspects of Walker’s book, particularly its queer themes, were largely excised from the film, which is a shame. But there is still enough here to appreciate. It’s an auspicious debut for Goldberg, ingeniously plucked out of the comedy scene and placed in a big dramatic role. And the closing moments of the film, in which Celie is reunited with her long estranged sister, are the stuff of a Grade A tearjerker.

16. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Genre: Action-adventure
Notable cast: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan
MPA rating: PG

One of the gnarliest of Spielberg’s films, Temple of Doom has received its fair share of criticism, including from its own director. The film is bleak and gross, and its depiction of India is iffy at best. It’s hard to excuse the latter aspect. But as for the bleakness and the grossness, well, those are actually part of the film’s dark appeal. Temple of Doom is a vividly rendered grotesque, plunging Indy into the horrifying depths of a maniac death cult that uses child slaves in its search for a precious religious artifact. There’s also the less grimy fun of the film’s opening set piece, unfolding at a chichi nightclub in Shanghai, and the subsequent airplane escape. Spielberg may look at the film and see, among other things, the demons of his divorce from Amy Irving, but plenty of kids my age saw (and still see) a hideously alluring nightmare.

15. The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Genre: Action-adventure
Notable cast: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig
MPA rating: PG

Based as it is on the beloved graphic novels by the Belgian artist Hergé, one does spend some of Tintin wishing it had been made with hand-drawn animation. The motion-capture technology employed in the film was relatively new at the time, and 14 years later it looks rudimentary. But one gets over that quickly, as Spielberg whisks the audience along on a witty, rollicking adventure involving boats, planes, a sneaky falcon, and a lost treasure. Spielberg aptly captures what it was to be a little kid first transported by Tintin’s exploits—without being cloying. The film is winsome and light on its feet, its iconic characters brought to life in sparkling voice performances from Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, and Andy Serkis.

14. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Genre: Sci-fi adventure, Coming-of-age
Notable cast: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote
MPA rating: PG

I must admit that this movie, about siblings befriending a cute/icky alien creature, was not one of my childhood touchstones, as it was for so many people. I saw it and liked it, but then moved on to other films (some of them from Spielberg). So my assessment is mostly coming from a middle-aged perspective, in which E.T. is appreciated for its heart-swelling sentiment and technical craft but not held up as an emblem of childhood itself. One of Spielberg’s few true children’s films, E.T. is simple in plot and broad in its themes—which makes watching it as an adult a little less than thrilling. That is until the John Williams score kicks in as those kids go soaring into the sky on their bicycles. And then, boy, does E.T. feel pretty significant. That is one of Hollywood’s most indelible images for a reason. Though I would argue that E.T. in that little blonde wig should be even more famous; it’s the greatest thing in the whole movie.

13. Lincoln (2012)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn
MPA rating: PG-13

This literate, rumbling biopic is probably best remembered for Daniel Day-Lewis’s enormous-yet-humble performance as the 16th president of the United States. Which is fair enough. Day-Lewis is mesmerizing, adopting a whispery croak of a voice to play a man pushing his way toward the righteous end of slavery. But there’s much else to be savored in the film, too. Tommy Lee Jones is lovably ornery as Thaddeus Stevens; Sally Field gives good addled melodrama as Mary Todd Lincoln; James Spader is sly and peppery as a lobbyist working for the cause of emancipation. (The rest of the sprawling cast is terrific, too.) Tony Kushner’s script makes august poetry of both congressional speeches and backroom machinations. Spielberg arranges the many moving parts of his film into a symphony of process, arguing for the perseverance of good against tall odds. We may not all share that same optimistic view of America, but the case is at least mightily made. And that shot of Lincoln and his son behind a billowing curtain, listening to the bells tolling freedom? True cinema.

12. Minority Report (2002)

Genre: Action-thriller
Notable cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton
MPA rating: PG-13

A sad, nervous sci-fi thriller, Minority Report envisions a future in which surveillance is omnipresent and screens advertise things to us wherever we go. So, Minority Report envisions our present day, only with police on jet packs and people who can predict crimes. It’s a lark of a mystery, full of stunning set pieces from an eyeball transplant to a chase across a highway zooming with self-driving cars. Minority Report is a “one for them” picture that Spielberg nonetheless imbues with great thought and ingenuity, making a richly grained blockbuster that prods at the mind. And it’s one of the last great uses of Tom Cruise outside of the Mission: Impossible series. Here, he’s nimble and intense and, perhaps most important to his career, he has a great haircut.

11. Munich (2005)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Marie-Josée Croze
MPA rating: R

The third in Spielberg’s triptych of films reacting to 9/11, Munich marks the director’s first time working with Kushner, who has become as valued a collaborator as Spielberg’s longtime director of photography, Janusz Kamiński. Together they create a probing moral thriller about Mossad agents (led by Eric Bana’s conflicted former soldier, Avner) as they clandestinely exact vengeance for the kidnap and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Spielberg is having a debate about responding to violence with violence, be it state sanctioned or extrajudicial. If any answer is reached, it’s a despondent one: Munich persuasively argues that too often the only outcome is further violence, drawing a connective line between conflicts past and present and realizing them as one never-ending tragedy. The film also functions beautifully as a mere spy/assassin suspense movie, skulking across Europe as Avner and his team plunge further and further into the abyss. Yes, the sex scene toward the end is jarring, but otherwise Munich is a sharp and sophisticated portrait of geopolitical confusion.

10. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Genre: Action-adventure
Notable cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Alison Doody
MPA rating: PG-13

Again, I am biased because I had this video as a kid and I watched it maybe once a month for years. I know people have issues with the movie’s Indy-and-his-dad silliness, or with the corniness of a young Indy first donning his fedora. To me, though, Last Crusade is a nearly flawless adventure; creepy, evocative, funny, and sweet in equal measure. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery spar beautifully; Alison Doody, Julian Glover, and Michael Byrne are perfectly loathsome villains. And the action scenes are yet another display of Spielberg’s boggling command of movie physics. Watch the whole tank sequence again and tell me that’s not better than all the Marvel movies combined.

9. The Fabelmans (2022)

Genre: Coming-of-age, Period drama
Notable cast: Michelle Williams, Gabriel LaBelle, Paul Dano
MPA rating: PG-13

Spielberg’s most recent film is by far his most personal, and would certainly suffice if it were to be his last. (It’s not; he’s beginning production on an alien movie with Emily Blunt.) A fictionalized account of Spielberg’s childhood and adolescence, The Fabelmans is a touching watercolor of a family in flux, of a dawning creative passion that threatens to alienate a young Steven—or Sam, in this case—from other people and keep him forever behind a camera. It’s an assessment of the forces that shaped the world’s most influential filmmaker, disarmingly gracious and humble in its efforts to explain the man behind the magic. Gabriel LaBelle gives a remarkable debut performance as teenage Sam, while Michelle Williams flits and swoons and crumples magnificently as Sam’s dreamy, troubled mother. Though Spielberg has earned the right to solipsism like this, his film is not just about himself. It is more universally a look at our parents as people unto themselves, with their own chased wishes and dashed dreams, their own desires and foibles. It’s an epic of realization, one that brilliantly illuminates all of Spielberg’s past work.

8. Bridge of Spies (2015)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda
MPA rating: PG-13

A clever and sneakily poignant film about an American lawyer, played by Tom Hanks, traveling to East Berlin to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the Russians and the Stasi, Bridge of Spies is not among Spielberg’s loudest or flashiest films. It is instead efficient, low to the ground. When I first saw the film, I was a little underwhelmed—I guess I was expecting a Cold War version of Munich or something. But on subsequent rewatches, the film has revealed its subtle power, the grace of Hanks’s performance, the quiet plea of its messaging. Bridge of Spies is an amiable movie that nonetheless takes seriously its call for compassionate diplomacy, for standing up to do scary but worthwhile things. It’s very Spielbergian in that way, but with a more nuanced touch than some of his earlier films. And what a performance from Mark Rylance, whose mellow evenness embodies the film’s weary but not cynical worldview.

7. Jaws (1975)

Genre: Thriller drama
Notable cast: Roy Schneider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
MPA rating: PG

What works best in Spielberg’s breakthrough film, which helped invent the idea of the summer blockbuster, is how textured each of its characters are, from the shifty mayor of Amity Island, to the grieving Mrs. Kintner, to Roy Scheider’s beleaguered Chief Brody. Everyone is real, and thus the stakes of the movie, in which a great white shark stalks the coastline of a New England resort town, feel as high as they can be. Spielberg allows for moments of human exchange in between scenes of suspense, something that only the best genre movie-makers do. Jaws may have inevitably lost some luster as special effects techniques rapidly improved (and then sorta devolved) over the years, but the human factor endures. Nowadays, Jaws almost plays like a small-town drama, occasionally visited by a shark. A perfectly fine thing for a movie to be.

6. Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Genre: Crime, Comedy-drama
Notable cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken
MPA rating: PG-13

A thoughtful rumination on family is smuggled inside a sprightly con-game caper in one of Spielberg’s deftest light-touch films. Leonardo DiCaprio is magnetic and pitiable as Frank Abagnale, a wunderkind check forger and fabulist who is scrambling as fast as he can in the hopes of making his father proud. That towering figure, himself a kind of grifter, is played by Christopher Walken, who sheds much of his familiar shtick to delve into the heart of a heartbroken man. Tom Hanks is steelier, but still pretty soft, as an FBI agent hot on Frank’s tail. These dynamics, paternal and pseudo-paternal, are smartly teased out and complicated as the film lilts and dashes along. Psychologically and emotionally astute, Catch Me If You Can is the kind of intelligent entertainment that is in desperately short supply these days.

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Genre: Action-adventure
Notable cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman
MPA rating: PG

A popcorn masterpiece of the highest order, the original Indiana Jones film secured Harrison Ford’s megastar profile (for good reason) and raised the bar for action scenes forever. Blending the supernatural with the practical, Spielberg doesn’t harken back to adventure serials of old so much as he invents a whole new thing. Raiders is witty and scary and sexy and fantastic. There’s not much more that needs to be said about it. Though I should mention that a big ball goes rolling after Indy in a creepy cave, and it’s spectacular.

4. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Genre: War, Period drama
Notable cast: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore
MPA rating: R

It may be true that all war films inevitably glorify such conflict, but Spielberg’s wrenching action-drama pretty convincingly demonstrates its hellishness. There is of course the famous D-Day landing scene, captured in boggling verité, for which Spielberg and Kamiński stripped filters off lenses and didn’t worry if a spatter of sand or fake blood got on the camera. Everything that follows is a wonder, too, building to a terrifying siege scene that brings the movie to its heartsick end. As is a hallmark of his spectacle filmmaking, Spielberg pauses here and there to let his characters talk, to unspool bits of their backstories and inner lives, thereby compounding the tragedy of the whole thing. Spielberg’s obsession with the Second World War might seem almost fetishistic were it not for the care and gravity with which he treats the subject, in this and other films. (Not so much in 1941, but he was young then.) Saving Private Ryan gives individual shape to a massive conflict, offering a tribute to bravery that maintains a sober clarity about the awfulness of having to be brave at all.

3. Jurassic Park (1993)

Genre: Action-adventure
Notable cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum
MPA rating: PG-13

The first part of Spielberg’s big, career-changing 1993 is a monster movie to beat them all, a smart and endlessly suspenseful adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel. The film exemplifies so many of Spielberg’s good instincts. It’s perfectly cast, with a focus on temperament rather than mega-star fame. (Surely bigger names than Sam Neill and Laura Dern would have killed for those roles.) The film is carefully, credibly detailed, leaving no small aspect unconsidered. Its scenes of dinosaur carnage are thoughtfully staged, always keeping a mind toward the fact that these are just animals acting on instinct, not the evil entities that the dinos evolved into in the Jurassic World films. And if you want to talk about moments of pure Spielbergian awe, you can perhaps do no better than the scene of Drs. Grant and Sattler rising up out of a Jeep to behold the wonder of not just Mr. Hammond’s creation, but Spielberg’s, too.

2. Schindler’s List (1993)

Genre: Period drama
Notable cast: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley
MPA rating: R

It’s strange to consider 30 years ago and remember, or learn for the first time, what a wild endeavor this film seemed to be back then. Steven Spielberg, the E.T. guy, directing a movie about the Holocaust?? By now, the solemnity and grimness that so surprised people has been well established in Spielberg’s body of work. But three decades ago, it was a risky big swing that paid off handsomely. Schindler’s List is a dreadful marvel, chronicling the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, the misery of the Plaszów and Auschwitz concentration camps, and the efforts of a German industrialist who manipulated the system to save the lives of some 1,200 Jewish prisoners. Shot in inky black-and-white, Schindler’s List has been criticized for being too stately, too pretty, too sentimental for a film about modern civilization’s greatest horror. I understand that criticism, but that is never how Schindler’s List has presented to me. It’s a grave and urgent movie, forcing the viewer to confront the terrible reality of history and then offering, as Spielberg is wont to do, some measure of decency and even hope to cling to. It’s an appropriately despairing picture, but not nihilistic. Yes, the film is a stunning technical feat, but humanity is never sacrificed to the gods of style. Spielberg keeps his gaze, and ours, trained where it ought to be, on a vision of compassion’s great capacity.

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Genre: Sci-fi drama
Notable cast: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor
MPA rating: PG-13

After watching The Fabelmans, it’s impossible not to look back at Spielberg’s oeuvre and plainly recognize the specific pain that animates so much of his depictions of parenthood, of childhood, of something pure and safe fractured by calamity. It took him a long time to work through all that stuff, and I’d argue that A.I. represents a significant turning point—perhaps, even, the end of a decades-long quest. Though Stanley Kubrick and the writer Ian Watson developed much of the film before Spielberg took over as director, there is so much Spielberg in the final product. The film is, at root, a yearning for the imagined eden of childhood, a metaphor for what it is to venture into a scary world and then forever long to return to lost innocence. Yes, it’s about a robot child (a heartbreaking Haley Joel Osment) hoping to become a real boy in the Pinocchio fashion, but the film has much more than that on its mind—even if that basic plot is pretty weighty on its own.

What Spielberg brings to the project is a kind of finality, the sense that this seismic director is letting go of the obsessions of his earlier work—making peace with the gap he’d long been trying to fill. He offers a benediction to all the little boys of his movies, to himself, to those in the audience who have similarly retreated into the wonderful, nostalgic realms of alien encounters, of intrepid archeologists, of animal adventures. It’s not a rebuke but a kind of loving goodnight—though of course Spielberg would revisit some of those themes later in his career.

A.I. is a profound film, and a profoundly moving one, and expertly tailored. As it ages, it speaks with ever more prescience about environmental collapse, about the wary alliance of people and technology. We see future versions of us violently asserting their humanity or losing themselves to the android pleasures of synthetic experience, all of it wistfully inexorable. Sorrowful and kind, A.I. may be among the greatest science-fiction ever created. It’s an occasionally frightening bedtime story that generously offers comfort to all those who feel purchaseless in the mad hurtle of time—to those who, like Spielberg, terribly and wonderfully remember when their entire planet was a house and a family and the bittersweetly deluded belief that it would all stretch on endlessly.

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