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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Miranda’s Victim review – law-changing courtroom drama stuffed with acting muscle

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Abigail Breslin is subtle as the 1960s victim of sexual crime in a dramatisation of a landmark case that is a welcome defence of US jurisprudence

Here is a fraught and muscular courtroom drama in the strident 1990s style, with the US legal system fitted out with a top-notch cast including Luke Wilson, Ryan Phillippe, Andy Garcia, Donald Sutherland and Kyle MacLachan. As various lawyers and judges, they ditch suit jackets, roll up shirtsleeves and make show-stopping objections in an account of the 1960s legal case that gave rise to the “Miranda rights” – “You have the right to remain silent … ” It’s a welcome defence of US jurisprudence for an era in which it is under threat from Donald Trump’s machinations, and is one that also benefits from the cooperation – apparently for the first time – of Patricia Weir, the rape victim at its centre (otherwise known by the pseudonym Lois Ann Jameson).

Played by Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin, Trish is the meek teenager abducted on her way home from her cinema usher job, driven out into the Arizona desert and sexually assaulted. Bravely choosing to breach the omertà regarding rape and testify, she manages to put labourer Ernesto Miranda (Sebastian Quinn) behind bars – until barnstorming lawyer John J Flynn (Phillippe) persuades the supreme court that due process was trampled during Miranda’s arrest, establishing the famous precedent. Manipulated by Detective Cooley (Enrique Murciano) into voluntarily stepping into the police precinct, Miranda is identified in a rigged lineup and his confession is heard without a lawyer.

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