The 21st-Century Steven Spielberg Rankings. Plus: ‘Office Romance’ and ‘The Furious.’

Disclosure Day 2026

Opened to $44M domestic and $93M worldwide, beating soft tracking. 59% of the audience was over 34. It's Spielberg's first real summer hit since Minority Report.

Obsession 2026

Still drawing crowds weeks into its run as the box office keeps posting $40M openings.

Office Romance 2026

Jennifer Lopez as the heir-CEO of a budget airline who can't act on her spark with in-house counsel Brett Goldstein (who also wrote it) because of the company's anti-fraternization rule. Sean liked it more than he expected, with a decent script and good one-liners, but was annoyed by the New Jersey tax-credit cheapness, singling out the Anthropologie-by-AI bedroom set. Loaded supporting bench: Edward James Olmos, Bradley Whitford, Tony Hale, Jodie Whittaker, and Betty Gilpin.

Selena 1997

The one Eileen asked for first. With Out of Sight, head and shoulders above the rest of the filmography.

Out of Sight 1998

The other undeniable classic; Sean and Amanda's two picks for her best.

Anaconda 1997

Her action breakout.

The Cell 2000

Tarsem Singh's serial-killer thriller. The second DVD Sean ever owned, a gift from Eileen in high school.

The Wedding Planner 2001

They staged real weddings for it, Amanda notes.

Maid in Manhattan 2002

With Ralph Fiennes. Amanda rewatched it recently and found who it laughs at, and why, badly dated.

Enough 2002

Michael Apted directs. Preposterous, not bad, and pure meme fuel from the poster.

Gigli 2003

A terrible film, but a pop-cultural must.

Jersey Girl 2004

Hustlers 2019

The late-career high, a 20-year jump from her early run.

Shotgun Wedding 2022

Not bad, and better than Office Romance to Sean: at least it sprang for a resort and a good end-credits cameo.

Halftime 2022

The Super Bowl documentary. The Golden Globe crying scene lives rent-free in Sean's head.

The Greatest Love Story Never Told 2024

The making-of documentary for her This Is Me… Now project.

The Furious 2026

A pan-Asian martial-arts revenge movie Sean calls a possible instant classic. A mute, highly trained father (Xie Miao) hunts a child-abduction ring after his daughter is taken, teaming with another lethal fighter (Joe Taslim). Near hand-to-hand only, brutal, with inventive use of ice, and a five-way showdown that splits into a five-panel close-up of the fighters' eyes that had the crowd on its feet.

Disclosure Day 2026

Amanda's second watch left her cold on the jammed-on Christian undertones and the device-like Eve Hewson character, but blown away by the tapes and the news-anchor sequence (Courtney Grace). They read it as a post-COVID allegory about whether anything could still unite us, note Sarah Broshar taking over from longtime editor Michael Kahn, and wonder whether Tony Kushner turned the script down.

The Fabelmans 2022

No. 1, audaciously. His Killers of the Flower Moon: an origin story that fuses his biography with the movies, hand in hand with Disclosure Day.

Catch Me If You Can 2002

No. 2. His most purely pleasurable film of the century: old-school Spielberg about a father and son putting on a show.

Lincoln 2012

A five-star masterpiece to Sean, overlooked despite Day-Lewis's Best Actor.

Minority Report 2002

A banger. Peak Cruise-Spielberg energy that still holds up as pure entertainment.

Munich 2005

Sean's happiest rediscovery, maybe his best-ever filmmaking. The start of the Tony Kushner partnership, held back only by Eric Bana's central miscasting.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence 2001

Sean's real No. 1 and the film he'd have put on their 25-for-25 list: the biggest world of the bunch, fusing Kubrick's sensibility with his own. Amanda has never seen it.

West Side Story 2021

Amanda rides hard for it; Sean calls the filmmaking extraordinary but docks it as a straight remake.

War of the Worlds 2005

Harrowing and alive, a direct response to 9/11 and the only present-day film of his recent run.

Bridge of Spies 2015

No. 9. A banger, especially the first half; one of his best period pieces. Sean was surprised how much he liked the revisit.

Disclosure Day 2026

Tied at 11 with The Post: twin films about revelation and an Englishman prying secrets loose. Sean gives it the edge for having more to chew on.

The Post 2017

Tied at 11. Handsome and old-fashioned, a strong Streep performance, a little trapped in its first-wave-Trump moment.

Ready Player One 2018

Flawed and goofy, but Sean rates the world-building and Mark Rylance's tech-mogul turn, and thinks its point about online identity was right.

The Terminal 2004

A kind, minor movie about a displaced man in purgatory; they tie it to Bridge of Spies' interest in people othered by bureaucracy.

War Horse 2011

Elegant, and the film that famously enraged Amanda's father. She couldn't get through the rewatch.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2008

The one movie here Sean wishes he hadn't made, a cash-in, aliens and all.

The Adventures of Tintin 2011

Co-directed with Peter Jackson. A curiosity nobody could quite explain the appeal of, beyond the digital-animation experiment.

The BFG 2016

Last place. Sean, a Roald Dahl kid, calls it misconceived from the start, mostly down to how the BFG looks.