the community ranking of Steven Spielberg’s films • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

O’Connor and Blunt, recently asked by us about their favorite Spielberg sci-fi films, disclosed their own relationships to the director’s body of work; for Blunt, it’s E.T. the Extra Terrestrial — “That one has impacted my soul for so long,” she enthuses — while O’Connor worships at the altar of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Reflecting on similarities between that film’s Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), a family man consumed by cosmic visions he can’t comprehend, and his character in Disclosure Day, a whistleblower in possession of highly classified documents, O’Connor explains, “There’s a kind of desperation in ‘no one believes me, no one understands me,’ and something Steven talks really beautifully about is that all of these people who’ve had experiences and brought their information forward have been scapegoated and made to feel mad. I think what I love about Close Encounters is there’s so much gaslighting going on in that film, and he’s just determined.”

While E.T. and Close Encounters both factor highly in our community’s overall ranking of Spielberg’s body of work, neither film came out ahead when considering the director’s larger oeuvre in order of average rating, from lowest to highest. While exempting anthology films like Night Gallery (1969), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and Amazing Stories (1986) that he only directed individual segments within, and early TV films like Something Evil (1972) and Savage! (1973) that were never released theatrically, here’s where the remainder of Spielberg’s feature filmography—including Disclosure Day—falls according to members.