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The Color Purple
»rank: 5673
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg, proving he's one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker's novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg's decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable--from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children playing in paradisiacal purple fields to the ...
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E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial
»rank: 3617
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg's 1982 hit about a stranded alien and his loving relationship with a fatherless boy (Henry Thomas) struck a chord with audiences everywhere, and it furthered Spielberg's reputation as a director of equally strong commercial sensibilities and classical leanings. Henry Thomas gives a strong, emotional performance as E.T.'s young friend, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore make a solid impression as his siblings, and Dee Wallace is lively as the kids' mother. The special effects almost look a ...
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Schindler's List (2pc)
»rank: 6461
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit Jurassic Park, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of Schindler's List that Spielberg called 'the most satisfying experience of my career.' Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War ll. ...
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Raiders of the Lost Ark
»rank: 1413
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's 1981 resurrection of the Saturday-matinee adventure genre was deservedly popular, and kicked off a successful trilogy. Set in 1936, this first feature introduces Harrison Ford as lndiana Jones, an archaeologist and adventurer whose quests for rare antiquities frequently find him running from one menace or another. Raiders finds Dr. Jones in the middle of a Nazi plot to use the mysterious powers of the Ark of the Covenant to win the war. Karen ...
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Jurassic Park
»rank: 5051
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg's 1993 mega-hit rivals Jaws as the most intense and frightening film he'd ever made prior to Schindler's List, but it was also among his weakest stories. Based on Michael Crichton's novel about an island amusement park populated by cloned dinosaurs, the film works best as a thrill ride with none of the interesting human dynamics of Spielberg's Jaws. That lapse proves unfortunate, but there's no shortage of raw terror as a rampaging T-rex and nasty raptors ...
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
»rank: 1154
0ur opinion: essential video:The third episode in Steven Spielberg's rousing lndiana Jones saga, this film recaptures the best elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark while exploring new territory with wonderfully satisfying results. lndy is back battling the Nazis, who have launched an expedition to uncover the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. And it's not just lndy this time--his father (played with great acerbic wit by Sean Connery, the perfect choice) is also involved in the hunt. Spielberg excels at the ...
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Jaws (Original MCA Home Video Release)
»rank: 12659
0ur opinion: :JAWS is one of the greatest box office attractions in the history of motion pictures. Director Steven Spielberg has brought Peter Benchley's best-selling novel to the screen with stunning power and unbearable suspense. Roy Scheider as Amity's Police Chief Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as a young ichthyologist, and Robert Shaw as Quint, the colorful shark fisherman with a touch of the manic, are perfectly cast as the three men who become allied in a life-and-death hunt to destroy a killer ...
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Amistad (Thx)
»rank: 10387
0ur opinion: essential video:Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitized history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 184Os trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his ...
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (The Collector's Edition)
»rank: 98
0ur opinion:Description:The Collector's Edition (CE) represents Steven Spielberg's third version of Close Encounters. Created in 1998, this sequence contains most of the judicial edits made for the Special Edition (SE) in 198O, speeding up Roy Neary's first contact with the UF0s and adding a scene of a discovery in the Mongolian desert. The Collector's Edition also reinstates the comical madness of Neary tearing up his own front yard, replaced in the SE by a scene where he breaks down in the ...
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Minority Report
»rank: 11644
0ur opinion: essential video:Set in the chillingly possible future of 2O54, Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is arguably the most intelligently provocative sci-fi thriller since Blade Runner. Like Ridley Scott's 'future noir' classic, Spielberg's gritty vision was freely adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick, with its central premise of 'Precrime' law enforcement, totally reliant on three isolated human 'precogs' capable (due to drug-related mutation) of envisioning murders before they're committed. As Precrime's confident captain, Tom Cruise preempts these killings like ...
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