The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’

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From franchise hits to historical epics, joyous musicals to autobiographical family sagas: Steven Spielberg has done it all. As his latest sci-fi film Disclosure Day is released, film-makers, authors and Guardian critics reveal which of his movies means the most to them Steven Spielberg is often described as the inventor of the “event movie” – or as the creator of our new age of IP supremacy, in which the genre property is more important than any above-the-title film star. But that isn’t quite it. He came of age in the American new wave era but in spirit belonged neither to that nor fully to Hollywood’s golden age studio system that preceded it. In fact, he synthesised both into a directing style that was audacious and fluent. He availed himself of the subversiveness of the new wave, and yet was classically oriented, drawing upon his love of – and alienation from – the all-American suburb, making him the Edward Hopper or the Andrew Wyeth of the movies. Tellingly, it was François Truffa...
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Golda review – lifeless Meir biopic hides Helen Mirren’s talent in a cloud of cigarette smoke

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As a drama about the Yom Kippur war, this film is bafflingly dull. As a portrait of Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister at the time, it’s even worse

Helen Mirren’s latexed and enhanced portrayal of Golda Meir, Israel’s “Iron Lady” prime minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, has been overtaken by a debate about “Jewface” casting because Mirren is not Jewish – addressing why Jews are casually excluded from the otherwise fiercely policed sensibilities about authenticity and identity on screen. (Would they get a white actor, for example, to black up as President Anwar Sadat?) It’s a valid and important question, but not exactly the problem in this stately, stuffy and at times almost comatose TV-movie-type drama about tension in Israel’s corridors of power as the Yom Kippur war exploded and the country faced off against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a battle for its very existence.

Mirren, normally such a sparkling performer, is lumbered with a grey wig, false nose and jowls, with occasional headscarf and handbag, making her look as if she is playing the Queen doing an impression of Richard Nixon. This Golda Meir impassively chainsmokes her way through wooden potted-history dialogue scenes with her military top brass, while everyone blows cigarette smoke at each other; occasionally she takes a break to lie prostrate on a hospital bed, stoically smoking and dying of cancer. Is she going to die? Why not? The film is flatlining.

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