Top 10 Steven Spielberg Movies

"Jaws" is one of Spielberg's many tickets to immortality. There are more than 2 hours of nail-biting, terrifying, edge-of-your-seat horror-- and you hardly ever see the source of all that drama. This movie is the epitome of the new movie maxim, "what you don't know can still hurt you", and it ushered in a new era of movie-making. Spielberg fakes us out, draws us in, and makes us scream again and again with the mechanical shark from hell.

So famous it has its own ride at Disneyworld, "E.T." is such a cute, heart-warming film that brings the magic of the special effects of the time home in a completely different manner. Instead of focusing on explosions, Spielberg shows the universality of friendship and the real meaning of home. The director has a remarkable talent for tapping into audiences' emotions, and he wields that tool admirably as he provides us with chuckles and cheers for the cutest alien around.

In a kickback to his "Jaws" days, Spielberg again sets out to incite terror in respectable movie-goers, and I'm not ashamed to say I bought right into it. I loved dinosaurs as a kid, and I got to relive that adoration with Spielberg's gorgeously realistic T-Rex and other prehistoric creatures (some less friendly than others). All in all, it's a great movie with its proper place in pop-culture, and I never fail to jump in surprise at all the right places.

No one watches an Indiana Jones film to learn something about themselves, they watch it to escape into a completely different world-- which happens to be Spielberg's specialty. I unabashedly gobbled up Indiana Jones's action-packed quest to obtain the Lost Ark before Adolf Hitler's henchmen. You can just tell that Spielberg had a great time filming this movie-- it's as quick as a rope swing ride over lava, and you never get time to catch your breath.

Definitely Spielberg's most memorable dramatic film, "Schindler's List" is an unbelievably moving WWII holocaust movie in which an Austrian businessman attempts to save condemned Jews by hiring them as workers in his factory. The film has Spielberg's traditional optimistic attitude, but the subject matter weights it down considerably, making it his darkest film by far. Eerily authentic, it's a well-known fact that Spielberg spent years researching and interviewing people to give this film an unmatched sense of realism. Honestly, I can't watch this film in its entirety; it's just too sad.

"Saving Private Ryan" is another Spielberg film that has me sitting in a forest of tissues by the time the credits roll. I'll say one thing about Spielberg to those who say he's too sentimental-- watching this film makes me want to run and hide in E.T.'s spindly arms. This film is a bloody, gory, and so unbelievably terrifying look at World War II. There's no way to convey the emotional intensity of that small group of soldiers as they try to bring Private Ryan home.

Generally speaking I’m not a fan of science fiction but Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the exceptions for me. It’s a brilliantly made, ahead-of-it’s time movie that again brought such a huge subject like alien existence down to earth – no pun intended! It’s an ordinary family story of an extraordinary event, which Spielberg made seem so real with the visual and special effects. I saw this in high definition again recently and it looks and sounds even better than I remember.

A classic chase flick to help me get over the trauma of "Schindler's List", Spielberg casts DiCaprio and Hanks in the perfect role as mouse and cat. The FBI agent is determined to catch the experienced young genius forger who leads him on a thrilling chase. Spielberg's typical sunshine-y style makes this a friendly film with a compelling element that'll keep even his detractors invested in the outcome. I love DiCaprio's cheeky attitude-- it fits in perfectly with Spielberg's style.

This fascinating look into the future (which doesn't seem all that far off right now) relies on an experimental "futurecrimes" unit that can predict murders before they happen, essentially wiping out murders in D.C. When an officer in the unit is predicted to commit a murder, he'll do anything to prove them wrong. This Spielberg film is one that left me wondering-- it was well-executed, don't get me wrong, but the happy ending just didn't fit. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I wonder if Spielberg has been toying with us all this time.