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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Hold Your Breath review – Sarah Paulson gets lost in scattered horror

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A 1930s-set thriller, about a family battling mysterious dust storms and a possible intruder, is impressively made and acted but falls apart by the end

An award-winning actor playing a fiercely, even frighteningly, protective mother guarding her two children from an unspecified malevolence in a remote home. No, I’m not talking about last month’s Halle Berry horror Never Let Go (is anyone still talking about that one?), but rather this month’s Sarah Paulson horror Hold Your Breath, a film that carries surface similarities (as well as a hopelessly generic rollercoaster-warning-esque title). Like that film, it plays with recent genre trends – a remote, pandemic-suited location and the corrosive effect of mental illness – as well as the use of a life-saving rope tied to the home for those who need to leave. And like that film, it’s also a bit of a mess.

Originally titled Dust, originally set to star Claire Foy and originally intended for a theatrical release, the film arrives at the beginning of Hulu’s month of genre fare, dubbed Huluween. It’s far classier than that categorisation would suggest (especially when compared with films like cheapo evil pumpkin horror Carved), a handsomely made 1930s-set thriller that, unlike most streaming offerings today, also looks like it could stretch to a cinema screen. Added class also comes from Paulson, one of the most reliable small-screen and stage actors we have, who hasn’t really had enough big-screen chances at least not as lead. While Hold Your Breath isn’t quite able to keep up with her, it’s at least a deserving and all-consuming showcase, the actor exhaustively giving it her all.

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