Steven Spielberg

Has all the mechanized ingenuity of one of those dazzling Tripods, but the bigger they are....it's the gutless ending that renders War of the Worlds most insulting.

The man's increasingly crazifying attempts to make serious films are still nothing more than good movies. Perhaps only Spielberg could fail so spectacularly well.

The eventual arrival of towering screen presence Sean Connery as Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. alongside Harrison Ford as Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. allows for what may be adventure cinema's most potent pairing.

If it was a sign of the times for Indiana Jones to take on more of a comic-book aspect, the film's accomodation of darker themes and explicit imagery came as something of a shock to many.

The postmodern heir to North By Northwest...like any deathless classic, Raiders is a perfect marriage of star and material.

George Lucas adopted a new mantra: 'It's only a movie, it's only a movie, it's only a movie.' And he's right. It'll certainly do for a Friday night. But to...fans, the 1980s films are more than movies.

'How Green Was My Valley, How Smart Was My Horse.'

Day-Lewis...wears well the weariness of the office and Lincoln's puckish yet subdued sense of humor, scaling the man closer to life-size than Mount Rushmore monumental.

Steven Spielberg goes into Stanley Kramer mode for Bridge of Spies, a socially conscious tale of touch-and-go diplomacy at home, at the office, and on the global stage.

Largely lifeless, which is unusual for fantasy material birthed by Roald Dahl or directed by Steven Spielberg, much less a combination of the two.

Conjures plenty of empty spectacle...but doesn’t underpin it with characters that move beyond the generic or, more crucially, the productively sharp satire that just maybe could have saved this ain’t-it-cool story from itself. 

The heroic journalism depicted in The Post could hardly be more timely, it’s true, but Spielberg’s take rarely achieves dramatic traction.