32 Steven Spielberg Movies Ranked Worst to Best

This is a screwball comedy about Californians in a panic over what they fear is an imminent invasion by Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The movie featured “Saturday Night Live” stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough return in this sequel to the runaway hit “Jurassic Park” (see No. 7). Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel said the film “lacked a staple of Steven Spielberg adventure films: exciting characters.”

Spielberg reimagined the beloved Peter Pan franchise with Peter (Robin Williams) as a middle-aged lawyer trying to find his young children who were abducted by Capt. Hook (Dustin Hoffman). Malcolm Johnson of the Hartford Courant said, “Unhappily, however, the transformation of a Type A American lawyer into a boy wonder unfolds with an uncertainty and clumsiness atypical of Spielberg.”

This homage to the groundbreaking television series is presented in anthology style. Critics said the film was uneven. Spielberg was one of four directors of the movie, along with John Landis, Joe Dante, and George Miller.

Critics liked this remake of the 1953 film based on the H.G. Wells’ novel more than audiences. Tom Cruise plays a dockwater trying to protect his children amid the chaos and destruction during an alien invasion.

This is a fantasy about an airborne firefighter (Richard Dreyfuss) who dies saving the life of a fellow flyer and his spirit returns to see a pilot he mentored fall in love with his girlfriend (Holly Hunter). Critic Janet Maslin of the New York Times said the film had its sentimental moments, but “it lacks the intimacy to make any of this very moving.”

The fourth film in the smash-hit Indiana Jones franchise has Jones in a Cold War-era race to find the Crystal Skull of Akator in Peru before a Soviet agent (Cate Blanchett) does. Though not quite up to the appeal of the previous Indiana Jones films, critics appreciated its energy, though some found a fourth installment unnecessary.

BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant, a role played by Mark Rylance, who befriends a 10-year-old girl. Together, they try to convince Queen Victoria to help them banish bad giants. The fantasy is based on a book by Roald Dahl. Sara Michelle Fetters of MovieFreak.com thought the film was a “delightful fantasy” and an “enchanting odyssey.”

Tom Hanks stars as an Eastern European tourist trapped at a terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport when war breaks out in his country and the Department of Homeland Security won’t let him leave or enter the U.S. Matthew Lucas of The Dispatch (Lexington, N.C.) called it a “jaunty and charming comedy.”

Haley Joel Osment plays a robotic child adopted by humans who finds he can’t adapt to the world around him and seeks a place where he will be accepted. Critic Andrew Bloom of The Spool opined “A.I. examines the morality of creating something that can love, that must love, but whose deeply-felt affections may not always be returned.”

Spielberg’s first feature film, “The Sugarland Express” is about a couple (Goldie Hawn and William Atherton) who lose custody of their baby to the state of Texas and go to extremes to get the child back. In doing so, they become folk heroes. Critic John Huddy of the Miami Herald called the film “A work of depth and dimension.”

This heart-tugging tale is the story of an English boy whose horse is sold to the British cavalry during World War I and his efforts to find his friend amid the carnage and destruction on the battlefields of Europe. Robbie Collin of Britain’s Daily Telegraph said “This is a soaring, sprawling epic that harks back to the dream-big visionaries of old Hollywood: John Ford, David Lean, David O. Selznick.”

An animated adventure in the spirit of the Indiana Jones films, based on the popular comic books by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, this is about a boy who buys a model of a wooden ship. Unbeknownst to him, the ship contains clues to the location of a buried treasure. Though most critics liked the movie, a dissenter was David Jays of Sight and Sound, who said “Like the thrill-sapping hero and anti-climactic denouement, it botches the full satisfaction of adrenaline adventure.”

In the future, players pursue a digital Easter egg that when found will reward them with a large fortune. Olly Richards of NME said “It’s a film to watch and enjoy once, but probably not to return to again and again, like Spielberg’s best.”

In “Amistad,” a slave (Djimon Hounsou) aboard the ship Amistad bound for America, leads a slave revolt. After the rebellion is suppressed, the rebels are held in Connecticut to await trial, and a freed slave (Morgan Freeman) tries to line up legal help for them. “Amistad is certainly a film of considerable power,” said Eric L. McKitrick of the New York Review of Books.

“The Post” is a solid newspaper yarn about The Washington Post’s efforts to catch up with the breakthrough story by The New York Times about the Pentagon Papers that revealed why America fought the Vietnam War. Critics lauded Meryl Streep’s performance as Post publisher Katharine Graham.

After the massacre of its athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, the Israeli government sends agents to retaliate against those who orchestrated the killing. Critics appreciated the performance of Eric Bana as one of the agents dealing with the consequences of his mission.

The first sequel in the Indiana Jones franchise is a bit darker than the original film. Jones is tasked by a small village in India to find a precious gem and some kidnapped boys. Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News called it a “rousing piece of entertainment.”

Drawing from the research of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” the historical epic was an Oscar-winning triumph for Daniel Day-Lewis, who played America’s 16th president.

A young Christian Bale plays an English boy living in Shanghai at the start of World War II who is captured by the Japanese and separated from his parents. Audiences liked the movie more than critics. David Denby of New York Magazine/Vulture said the film “is a great, overwrought movie that leaves one wordless and worn out.”

A provocative film based on a story by science fiction writer Philip K. Diсk, “Minority Report” is set in a future when law enforcement employs a technology that arrests and convicts murderers before they commit a crime. Namrata Joshi of Outlook said “Spielberg creates an intriguing world that is at once futuristic and accessible, it makes our collective imagination soar but is never alienating.”

Considered to be one of Spielberg’s most human and beloved films, ” E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” is an unlikely buddy movie — an alien marooned on Earth who befriends a young boy who tries to help the alien to go home. The film enjoys a 99% Freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Spielberg’s Cold War drama has Tom Hanks playing an attorney tasked with defending an accused spy portrayed by Mark Rylance. Critics credited Spielberg with pumping new life into the espionage genre.

Audiences liked “The Color Purple” more than critics. Based on Alice Walker’s novel of the same name, the movie is about a woman (Whoopi Goldberg) enduring years of abuse and bigotry who longs to be reunited with her sister in Africa. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film “a great, warm, hard, unforgiving, triumphant movie.”

“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” dazzled audiences when it premiered in 1977. Richard Dreyfuss plays a man who encounters a UFO and will stop at nothing, including giving up his family life, to find the truth about his experience. Adam Kempenaar of Filmspotting said the movie “is a reassuring cry to the cosmos that your life matters, you matter.”

The film that launched the Jurassic Park franchise shares equal appeal among critics and audiences. Critics said the scenes of terror of dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA and running amok in the 20th century evoked comparisons with Spielberg’s “Jaws” (see No. 4).

Sean Connery and Harrison Ford play father and son in this well-received third installment of the Indiana Jones series. Spielberg applied a lighter touch in this film than other movies in the franchise, as Jones and his father pursue the Holy Grail.

“Catch Me If You Can” is a delightful romp based on the true story of con man Frank Abagnale outwitting an exasperated FBI man played by Tom Hanks. Geoff Andrew of Time Out said the film was “this is the director’s most likeable film in ages, even if it’s insubstantial, overlong and, frankly, a touch redundant.”

The film most responsible for keeping people out of the ocean in 1974 and launching the Jaws franchise, it tells the story of a monstrous, rampaging Great White Shark plying the waters off a New England town. Among the memorable characters is Robert Shaw as a Captain Ahab-esque ship captain obsessed with killing the shark.

“Saving Private Ryan” set new standards for realistic war scenes and took home five Oscars in 1999, including a Best Director statue for Spielberg and a Best Cinematography award for Janusz Kaminski. The plot centers around a group of U.S. soldiers tasked with pulling out another GI from the battle area because all of his brothers have been killed in the war. “An old-fashioned war picture to rule them all,” said Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian. “Gripping, utterly uncynical, with viscerally convincing and audacious battle sequences.”

Spielberg’s homage to serial action movies from the 1930s launched the Indiana Jones franchise. In the first film, swashbuckling archeologist Indiana Jones tries to keep the Ark of the Covenant, said to hold the Ten Commandments, from falling into Nazi hands.

“Schindler’s List,” the story of how an Austrian businessman saved the lives of Jews during World War II, dominated the Academy Awards in 1994, winning seven Oscars, including Best Director — the first of three for Spielberg — and Best Picture. Susan Stark of the Detroit Free Press called the film “heartfelt” and “monumental.”