32 Steven Spielberg Movies Ranked Worst to Best

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.”