Full Disclosure, These Are the Best Steven Spielberg Movies

Disclosure Day's Steven Spielberg, Emily Blunt & Colman Domingo on Aliens, Empathy & Humanity

Just because a movie is big does not mean that it's great. And even if it's great, that doesn't mean people will see it.

Steven Spielberg has been threading that needle for 50 years, making the Disclosure Day director the founding president of an elite club of visionaries who make crowd-pleasing, blockbuster spectacles that are also great films.

And yet, he told E! News, “I never think anything is genius. That's the last thing I think about. I mean, I start with, ‘Is this gonna work at all? Is anybody gonna buy this?’”

In that vein, Spielberg movies have grossed more than $10.7 billion, making him the most commercially successful director ever, and he's won three Oscars (two for directing) en route to securing an EGOT earlier this year.

At the same time, the 79-year-old has been making highly personal films, telling the New York Times Magazine ahead of Disclosure Day's June 12 release, "I can't express enough how therapeutic and healthy it is for me to keep doing this job over and over and over again. I work so much out through this process."

And whether it's a movie that demands popcorn—Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park—or a box of tissues, or both (looking at you, E.T.), Spielberg's reputation as the consummate maker of Hollywood movies that mean something to people is set.

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The artists he's inspired along the way include Christopher Nolan, who revealed that Spielberg was the first person, other than studio heads, who saw Oppenheimer before it Barben-hammered box office records in the summer of 2023.

After Spielberg reached out for an unrelated matter, "we screened it for him on his own," Nolan shared in a 2024 AP chat with Dune director Denis Villeneuve. "I sat behind him and watched him watch the film. It was an extraordinary experience."

Which, coincidentally, is what countless theatergoers have said after watching a movie directed by Spielberg. Read on for a look at his best films: