Steven Spielberg remains one of the most successful directors in Hollywood history, and his movies have earned Oscar acclaim throughout his career. After getting his start on television, Spielberg made his name with the TV movie Duel and followed it with the crime drama The Sugarland Express before hitting the big time with his summer blockbuster Jaws.
While there were some missteps along the way, with flops like 1941 and Hook, Spielberg has mostly had more hits than misses over his career. Spielberg’s movies have earned 147 total Oscar nominations, with 25 wins. He has nine Best Director Oscar nominations, winning for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.
Over his 54 years directing movies, he has earned an Oscar nomination every decade that he has worked in the industry, with his first coming in 1977 for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and his most recent in 2022 for The Fabelmans. With so many great movies, here is a look at the best of the best from every decade of Steven Spielberg’s career.
1970s – Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)
The 1970s saw Steven Spielberg impress everyone with his debut film, the made-for-TV movie, Duel. He then broke out with the movie that helped create the Hollywood summer blockbuster with his horror movie Jaws. However, it was Spielberg’s follow-up to Jaws that remains his best movie of the 1970s.
In 1977, Steven Spielberg released the sci-fi drama Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film is a drama, with Richard Dreyfuss returning to work with Spielberg after they teamed up on Jaws. In this movie, he plays a man so obsessed with extraterrestrial mysteries that he gives up his family in the search for the truth.
The movie passes on the idea of invading aliens, and instead focuses on aliens contacting Earth and possibly seeking to exchange information with the planet. It was one of several Spielberg alien movies, with him dealing with kind aliens again in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and then with an invasion in War of the Worlds.
Of all his sci-fi movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind remains his masterpiece. This film allowed Spielberg to delve into a smart sci-fi story while also exploring the idea of abandonment in the family unit, a theme that has come into play throughout his career. It was so respected that Spielberg even secured legend François Truffaut for a cameo role.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind earned Steven Spielberg his first-ever Oscar nomination for Best Director, after Jaws was snubbed at the ceremony. In all, the film earned nine Oscar nominations, winning for Best Cinematography. The Library of Congress also entered it into the National Film Registry in 2007.
1980s – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
After hitting a stumbling block with his war comedy 1941 in 1979, Steven Spielberg rebounded with one of the best adventure movies ever made. Drawing on his love of classic movie serials from his childhood and the grand scope of epic movies like Lawrence of Arabia, Spielberg directed Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This first Indiana Jones movie did everything right. The film starts with Indy hunting for treasure in one of the greatest action-adventure sequences to open any movie. It then moves on to a search for the Ark of the Covenant, a battle against the worst villains in world history, the Nazis, and some of the most memorable set pieces in action cinema.
The movie was so well-received that it spawned a franchise, including follow-ups in 1984 and 1989, before returning years later with films in 2008 and 2023, although Spielberg didn’t direct the last release. None of the sequels match up with Raiders of the Lost Ark, although Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came the closest.
The 1980s had more great Spielberg movies, though none matched the brilliance of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The closest in comparison was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which Spielberg made the year after Raiders of the Lost Ark. He also had his first two Indiana Jones sequels that decade.
It should be noted that the 1980s were also when Steven Spielberg made his first serious movies. In 1985, Spielberg directed The Color Purple, based on the seminal novel by Alice Walker. He followed that up with Empire of the Sun, a war film based on the novel by J.G. Ballard.
In the 1980s, Steven Spielberg earned two Best Director nominations, one for Raiders of the Lost Ark and another for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. E.T. was also his first movie to earn a Best Picture nomination, with The Color Purple the second. However, looking back, Raiders of the Lost Ark had the most significant impact on Spielberg’s career.
In all, Raiders of the Lost Ark earned nine Oscar nominations, winning Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and a special achievement award for Sound Effects Editing.
1990s – Schindler’s List (1993)
Looking back at the 1990s, it is almost impossible to pick the best Steven Spielberg movie. That is because he released three masterpieces in that decade. In 1993, Spielberg released both Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, and in 1998, he directed Saving Private Ryan. Those are three of the best movies of all time.
Jurassic Park is a great movie that started a long-running franchise. It was also the first movie to fully embrace CGI in creating its dinosaurs. However, compared to Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, it really pales in terms of its importance and recognition as a masterpiece.
For those two movies, they are really a 1a and 1b for the greatest Steven Spielberg movie of the 1990s. However, if forced to choose only one, it comes down to Oscar wins. Spielberg won Best Director for both films, but Schindler’s List won Best Picture. For its part, Saving Private Ryan should have beaten Shakespeare in Love for the award.
Both movies were about World War II, with Schindler’s List about one man helping countless Jewish refugees escape the country when the Nazis wanted to kill them. Saving Private Ryan was a violent war movie about a troop of soldiers sent in to bring one man home. Both films proved Spielberg was the best director of the 1990s.
2000s – Minority Report (2002)
The 2000s started with an interesting movie for Steven Spielberg, as he directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a project Stanley Kubrick had started and Spielberg finished for his friend. However, it was his next sci-fi movie that topped the decade, with Minority Report standing as one of the best movies of the 21st Century.
Based on the Philip K. Dick novel, Minority Report is a dystopian thriller set in a future where law enforcement uses pre-cogs to predict crimes and arrest people before they commit them. It is a story about free will and the idea that people can never change their minds and are predestined to be good or bad. It is a prototypical Dick story.
Tom Cruise brought star power to the film, and he worked with Spielberg again three years later in War of the Worlds. This was also the decade in which Spielberg kept working with Tom Hanks on movies like Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal.
Spielberg earned another Best Picture and Best Director nomination for Munich and another Best Picture nomination for producing Letters from Iwo Jima in 2006. However, Minority Report is the best of the best for Spielberg in that decade.
2010s – Lincoln (2012)
The 2010s were an interesting decade for Steven Spielberg, as he alternated between whimsical movies and serious historical epics, finding more success along the way. He made family movies like The BFG and The Adventures of Tintin, a pop culture phenomenon in Ready Player One, and war movies in Bridge of Spies and War Horse.
However, his two best movies of the decade were the historical drama The Post, the story of The Washington Post releasing the Pentagon Papers, and the historical epic, Lincoln. Both movies earned Best Picture nominations, but it was Lincoln that earned Spielberg another Best Director nomination.
Lincoln covered the final four months of Abraham Lincoln’s life as he worked to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude. Lincoln earned 12 Oscar nominations, with Daniel Day-Lewis winning Best Actor, and the film also winning Best Production Design.
2020s – West Side Story (2021)
At this time, Steven Spielberg has released only two films in the 2020s, and both are great. In 2022, he released The Fabelmans, which is based on Spielberg’s own childhood and growing up in a broken family, with his love of filmmaking helping him move on. It earned seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.
However, Spielberg’s best movie of the 2020s is his 2021 musical remake, West Side Story. What makes this film so spectacular is that it was Spielberg’s first musical, and it seemed like he was born to shoot these scenes. The dance scenes, the musical numbers, and the choreography were masterful.
On top of that, Spielberg took a well-known story and made crucial changes, specifically updating the Puerto Rican gang to be less racially insensitive and helping all the characters feel like real people, not stereotypes. He made a great musical even better.
West Side Story earned seven Oscar nominations, including one for Ariana DeBose, who won Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Cinematography. West Side Story isn’t among the best Steven Spielberg movies, but in a long career, it stands up well against any other director.
