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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Wish You Were Here director David Leland dies aged 82

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The British film-maker also wrote the landmark TV play Made in Britain, starring Tim Roth, and won an Emmy award for Band of Brothers

David Leland, the director behind popular 1980s hit Wish You Were Here and writer on a string of acclaimed British films including Made in Britain, Mona Lisa and Personal Services, has died aged 82. His agency Casarotto Ramsay and Associates said in a statement that Leland died on Sunday surrounded by his family. They added: “He is survived by his wife, Sabrina, his four daughters, his son and his six grandchildren … all of whom he loved almost as much as Arsenal football club.”

Born in 1941, Leland initially trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech of Drama, before becoming part of the breakaway that led to the creation of the Drama Centre in 1963. He secured small roles in 1970s films such as John Mackenzie’s directorial debut One Brief Summer, Gawain and the Green Knight starring Murray Head and Jacques Demy’s The Pied Piper. However, he found writing and directing more to his taste, directing the world premiere of Michael Palin and Terry Jones’s pair of short plays, Their Finest Hours, at the Crucible theatre, Sheffield, in 1976, and commissioning Victoria Wood to write her 1978 play Talent for the same venue. In 1977 Leland cast Pierce Brosnan, who had also studied at the Drama Centre, in the UK premiere of Tennessee Williams’ play The Red Devil Battery Sign at the Roundhouse in London.

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