Steven Spielberg's movies, including the upcoming "Bridge of Spies" (opening October 16), so routinely receive rave reviews that it's easy to forget that critics once dismissed the director as a maker of rosy childhood fantasies and formulaic blockbusters about sharks, aliens, and dinosaurs.
If Spielberg is recognized today as both a great pop filmmaker and a great artist, it's largely because of these 13 must-see movies.
Gary Susman has been covering movies and TV for more than 25 years and has been a Moviefone columnist since 2009. He is a former senior writer at Entertainment Weekly, where he helped launch the award-winning PopWatch blog. He has written about entertainment for such outlets as Time, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, People, CNN, MSNBC, Life, The Village Voice, The Guardian, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The Boston Phoenix. He has been a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics since 1993. He is one of the authors of the 2011 book "LIFE 75 Years: The Very Best of LIFE."
