Every Steven Spielberg Movie, Ranked

There hasn’t been a single filmmaker – perhaps in the history of the medium – to capture the popular zeitgeist the way that Steven Spielberg has. Saying something is “Spielbergian” conjures a very specific set of criteria – it probably involves children (or is at least viewed through the honeyed lens of the adolescent experience), an uncanny scenario (archeologist hunts for occult artifacts, dinosaurs return to life) and a potent mixture of both fear and awe, sometimes in the same sequence or same moment. These ideas and concepts are usually conveyed through technically unparalleled camera movements that are still somehow unshowy (we get into the “Spielberg oner” later).