10. “Catch Me If You Can” (2002)
This seems like one of the more frivolous of Steven Spielberg’s supposedly “serious” movies —a jaunty, rollicking ode to the former luxury of air travel and the perversely nimble life of Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio), a professional con man who posed as a doctor, lawyer and airline pilot while defrauding countless banks by forging millions of dollars in phony checks. But while Spielberg glosses over the human wreckage that the real-life Abagnale left in his wake, the film still resonates like few of Spielberg’s most recent works have, maybe because its subtext is so firmly in the director’s wheelhouse: it is perhaps his second most powerful film about divorce after “E.T.” In the midst of all the poppy soundtrack cues, bright colors, spy movie theatrics (Spielberg, a noted 007 enthusiast, pays direct homage here) and hammy Tom Hanks acting, the filmmaker suggests that Abagnale is less a criminal than a lost child, wanting nothing more than to forge the kind of success that will reenergize his parents’ failed marriage. It’s easy to miss, but at the center of all the whirligig fun (which features a terrific title sequence and the first breakthrough performance by Amy Adams) is a little boy’s broken heart.
9. “The Sugarland Express” (1974)
Spielberg’s first proper theatrical feature, “The Sugarland Express” feels like a young man’s movie in the best of ways. There is a palpable eagerness to make every shot count as Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) busts her husband Clovis (William Atherton) out of prison and is now intent on retrieving their infant son from his foster parents. They take a rookie Texas state trooper hostage in the process, and away they go, with an ever-increasing police presence on their tail, even as they win hearts en route to Sugar Land (that’s the proper spelling, adding a hint of print-the-legend recklessness to a story inspired by a real crime). Hawn and Atherton are equally winning and naive, making the adoration that they earn from the locals as they pass from town to town all the more believable. ‘Sugarland’ marks the director’s first collaboration with John Williams and boasts one of the few downbeat endings in his oeuvre, but even the tragedy here feels bittersweet rather than just bitter. He’d later take much shit for his sentimental streak and earn much love for his overwhelming sense of spectacle, but this stands as a humane balance of both.
8. “Jurassic Park” (1993)
A roar. A crane shot. That John Williams melody. There’s a certain generation that responds to those signifiers within milliseconds. And yet (maybe because we’re not quite of that generation) time has illuminated the flaws in “Jurassic Park,” particularly the logical jumps that ensure, in typical kid-flick fashion, the T-Rex will arrive just when the narrative needs it, the kids will be impossibly smart and resourceful and the adults will make a host of lethal mistakes. But it’s easily to forgive those contrivances when Spielberg so matter-of-factly gives us dinosaurs back. Wisely keeping them hidden from view at the beginning and building on Michael Crichton’s charmingly heroic characterizations via David Koepp’s script, when he finally does show his dino villains in full attack mode, it is astonishing. Spielberg has made more dynamic and challenging films since, and of course the massive money-spinning reboot “Jurassic World” has changed the dino-blockbuster game up again, but even relative apostates would agree that “Jurassic Park” represents Spielberg on the kind of form that defines him as the most populist filmmaker of all time. He knows what the audience wants, and in “Jurassic Park,” he delivers it, while bringing entire species back from extinction at the same time.
7. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989)
Spielberg never got to make his Bond film, but he did get to cast the most iconic James Bond Sean Connery as the father of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones. Circumventing the darkness of ‘Temple of Doom‘ and recapturing the madcap adventurousness of ‘Raiders,’ “Last Crusade” remains one of his most delightfully entertaining films. It begins with a prologue that casts River Phoenix as a young Indy, and from there it centers on Jones’ dual search for the missing Henry Jones Sr. as well as the Holy Grail. We may marvel at Spielberg’s creation of fantastic set pieces (a chase through Venetian canals, the deadly obstacle course of the finale) and settings (Nazi-era Berlin and Petra, Jordan), but they never eclipse the human element. Ford’s Jones has good chemistry with Alison Doody’s conflicted Austrian Dr. Elsa Schneider, as does Connery’s Jones (wink, wink), but it’s Ford and Connery effortlessly real, sparky father/son scrappiness (aided by a consistently funny script from Tom Stoppard) that makes this the joy it is. Indy’s not Indy here, but “Junior,” and he may be a hero, but he still turns into a sulky teenager whenever his father is around.
6. “Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
1998 Best Picture winner “Shakespeare in Love” weirdly triumphed over both Terrence Malick‘s long-awaited “The Thin Red Line” and Spielberg’s brutal “Saving Private Ryan,” but Spielberg did take home his second Best Director Oscar. And a huge part of that has to be for his sublime direction of that unforgettable opening 20 minutes: the famed Omaha Beach landing sequence is still the best, most terrifyingly realistic and most heavily imitated war action scene ever filmed —it was shot by Spielberg’s brilliant regular DP Janusz Kaminski. The cast of grunts led by Tom Hanks may be given rather cliched arcs, but they’re totally committed —and Barry Pepper’s bible-quoting sniper steals every scene. The film is hampered by a few unfortunate Spielbergisms —those goddamn modern-day bookend scenes and the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer American flag waving are completely unnecessary— but in the end it’s a powerful, highly influential film that changed the way war movies were conceived and made. It also launched the trend of casting Matt Damon as a guy for whom a lot of people die and on whom a lot of money is spent to get him back home from somewhere inaccessible.