Steven Spielberg’s Top 10 Movies
With a nearly five-decade-long career Steven Spielberg has proved time after time that his movies are fantastic. With over thirty timeless classics to choose from, selecting Spielberg’s top 10 movies is an almost impossible task.
With such a wide variety of topics and so many award nominees and winners among his movies, it is hard to decide which movies to add to this short list. So after putting painstaking thought into the matter, without further ado let’s take a look at our top 10 Spielberg movies and what the director and producer, himself, had to say about them.
10. Lincoln (2012)
“Making the film”, says Spielberg, “confirmed not only my deep love of history but also the fact that I am a patriot and that I have a love for this country. I have expressed that in other movies, but I really tried to express it in this one – a respect for the fact that democracy works.”
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
When asked in 1980 to select a single “master image” that summed up his film career, Spielberg chose the shot of Barry opening his living room door to see the blazing orange light from the UFO. “That was beautiful but awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway. [Barry’s] very small, and it’s a very large door, and there’s a lot of promise or danger outside that door.”
8. Jurassic World (2015)
“To see Jurassic World come to life is almost like seeing Jurassic Park come true.”
7. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Spielberg also wanted to create a film that sympathized with a crook. He explained, “Frank was a 21st century genius working within the innocence of the mid ’60s, when people were more trusting than they are now. I don’t think this is the kind of movie where somebody could say, “I have a career plan.”
6. Munich (2005)
In a Time magazine cover story about the film on December 4, 2005, Spielberg said that the source of the film had second thoughts about his actions. “There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating,” Spielberg said. “It’s bound to try a man’s soul.” Of the real Avner, Spielberg says, “I don’t think he will ever find peace.”
5. Indiana Jones - Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
According to Spielberg, “We didn’t do 30 or 40 takes; usually only four. It was like silent film—shoot only what you need, no waste. Had I had more time and money, it would have turned out a pretentious movie.”
4. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
“So what you’re doing,” Spielberg said, “is sending eight people out, all of whom have parents, to rescue one boy and send him back to his mom when any or all of these kids, along the mission route, could be killed. That was the central tug that made me want to tell the story.”
3. Schindler’s List (1993)
“I was hit in the face with my personal life. My upbringing. My Jewishness. The stories my grandparents told me about the Shoah. And Jewish life came pouring back into my heart. I cried all the time.”
2. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
The filmmaker never expected E.T. to be a success. “Never in my wildest, wishful thinking did I imagine that our film would reach beyond a handful of family and friends,” he said. “The result was unexpected and took my breath away.”
1. Jaws (1975)
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Spielberg said making the horror masterpiece was a scarring experience. While riding around the Universal Studios lot, Spielberg said he would come there a lot after making “Jaws.”
“I used to come out for a couple of years after I made the movie to get over my PTSD, I would work through my own trauma, because it was traumatic. I would just sit in that boat alone for hours, just working through, and I would shake. My hands would shake.”
