We’re being truly spoiled this summer blockbuster season with the return of its bona fide creator, Steven Spielberg, and his latest movie offering Disclosure Day.
Not only has he assembled a juicy cast with the likes of Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo and Colin Firth, but he’s teamed up once again with musical maestro John Williams for another stirring score.
Disclosure Day is also a return to sci-fi and aliens for Spielberg, who made such an impact in the space with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (we’ll gloss over the awkward alien turn that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull took in its final act).
To mark this auspicious release, I have assembled my top five movies from his impressive filmography of the past 55 years.
For a man whose name has become a byword for cinema though, tough choices forced me to leave out the likes of the criminally underrated Catch Me If You Can, Saving Private Ryan, his reassuringly strong version of West Side Story and Hook (as a millennial I am duty bound to rail against its outrageously low Rotten Tomatoes score of 37%). Consider these my honourable mentions.
But now, following much personal angst, please find below my thoughts on the cream of the Spielberg crop (circle); and may this prompt you on your own journey of wondrous rediscovery…
5. Schindler’s List (1993)
I’m not sure I can put this better than fan Lukas Miller’s comment did on YouTube under the trailer for Schindler’s List: ‘I remember my mother warning me against this movie. “It’s not that it’s a bad film,” she said. “It’s a masterpiece but the problem is, you can’t unsee it.”’
Starring Liam Neeson, Sir Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, it tells the real-life story of industrialist Oskar Schindler, who ended up saving approximately 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War Two.
He’s no hero, having moved to Poland in a bid to make a fortune, but Schindler eventually finds he can no longer stand by in the face of the Nazis’ brutality.
On my first attempt at watching it as a 12-year-old, I couldn’t get beyond the famous scene featuring the young girl in the red coat, it was so affecting.
And for anyone who thinks the biggest villain Fiennes ever played was Voldemort, you are clearly yet to see the reprehensible things his SS officer Amon Göth does.
Schindler’s List picked up seven Academy Awards from its 12 nominations in 1994, including best picture and best director for Spielberg.
4. Jurassic Park (1993)
In more familiar and family-friendly(ish) territory we find Jurassic Park, co-incidentally the film Spielberg made just before Schindler’s List.
This sci-fi adventure marked Spielberg’s first time collaborating with longtime writer David Koepp, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Crichton, based on his 1990 novel of the same name.
Its tagline was ‘an adventure 65 million years in the making’, and this movie has since spawned six further feature films among other spin-offs as part of a mammoth franchise.
Jurassic Park was where it all began, though – massively influencing the way people still imagine dinosaurs nowadays with its groundbreaking use of both animatronics and CGI.
It’s remarkable how little the T-rex has aged, including its ability to scare audiences, many of whom have seen the way they look at ripples in a glass of water forever changed.
The original Jurassic Park stars Richard Attenborough as a wealthy CEO who has funded a team of genetic scientists to create a wildlife park of full of de-extinct dinosaurs.
Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum play the scientific experts invited to certify its safety for the general public… what could possibly go wrong?
3. Jaws (1975)
Where it all began for Spielberg as one of the most popular filmmakers alive, Jaws became the first-ever summer blockbuster, bucking the trend in the 1970s of hoped-for hits being released in the winter instead, as well as introducing the now standard practice of a wide release in thousands of cinemas.
When a young woman is killed by a shark while skinny-dipping in Amity Island, police chief Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches but is overruled by the mayor and his focus on tourist revenue.
But after a second incident on the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Brody teams up with expert marine biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and grizzled ship captain Quint (Robert Shaw) to hunt and kill what is now thought to be a great white shark.
Eventually making $495million (£370.8m) on a production budget of just $9m (£6.7m), Jaws was truly a phenomenon.
From another Williams’ score that’s all but immortal to quotes including ‘you’re gonna need a bigger boat’, Jaws also fed society’s fear of sharks to a point that Spielberg later said he ‘truly regrets’ – they weren’t lying with the famous tagline for Jaws 2 three years later: ‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…’
Spielberg was also inspired by Alfred Hitchcock in his decision to mostly suggest the shark’s presence throughout the film, following continued malfunctioning with the mechanical sharks, building greater tension and letting Jaws still terrify us all more than 50 years later.
2. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial should be mandatory childhood viewing.
Penned by screenwriter Melissa Mathison, this sci-fi fantasy follows 10-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas), who befriends a peaceful alien who has been stranded on earth during a visit to our planet.
Sheltering him from the aggressive forces of US government agents searching for him, Elliott enlists the help of his friends and family to help E.T. find his way home.
The film’s concept was based on an imaginary friend Spielberg created after his parents’ divorce, and famously gave Drew Barrymore her breakthrough role as Elliott’s five-year-old sister Gertie.
It became the highest-grossing film of all time upon release (surpassing 1977’s Star Wars, and until Spielberg toppled himself with Jurassic Park), and was later nominated for nine Oscars, winning four.
But aside from all the measurable elements of success, E.T. truly provides that magical feeling of childlike wonder whenever you watch it. It’s nostalgia at its purest and finest.
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Perhaps it’s my particular interests in old films and old stuff, but the 1930s-set adventures of dashing archaeologist Indiana Jones always hugely appealed to me.
While I have time for all five of Indy’s adventures, despite their varying quality, I think the first instalment is undoubtedly the best.
And in my eyes, Harrison Ford has always been Indiana Jones first and Han Solo second (even if that wasn’t the case chronologically speaking).
Spanning the globe from Peru to Nepal to Egypt (and always following that little dotted red line), Indy is sent to try and stop a rival archaeologist guiding Nazis to the Ark of the Covenant, the powers of which are thought to make an army invincible.
Along the way he teams up with his old mentor’s daughter – and ex – Marion (Karen Allen) and Egyptian excavist friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) in a race against time, unknowable forces and Indy’s nemesis – snakes.
Raiders of the Lost Ark not only has one of the best themes to a movie ever (thank you, once again, to Williams), but also offers comedy, romance and spectacle to create the ultimate action-adventure to which all others will forever be compared.
And 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a close second.
Disclosure Day releases in UK cinemas from today before releasing internationally on Friday June 12.
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