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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‘One of the most vicious people of our century’: Maria Bakalova on Donald Trump – and playing Ivana in The Apprentice

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Her breakout role in the Borat sequel grabbed attention after a scene with Rudy Giuliani on a bed. Now she’s playing Trump’s ex-wife in a controversial biopic – but insists it’s not a political film

The week Maria Bakalova was asked to consider playing Ivana Trump for the new film The Apprentice, she was in New York filming something else. With the meeting scheduled for her one day off, she spent the evening before trying to channel Donald Trump’s first wife. The film is set in the 70s and 80s, so she spent hours wading through photos of Ivana in that era. “A lot of makeup, a lot of hair,” she says. Bakalova laughs as she remembers spending the evening experimenting with a mushroom-like hairstyle and “heavy eyeliner with a lot of powder, like inches”, although she didn’t have an Ivana-esque wardrobe – “Am I gen Z or a millennial?” asks the 28-year-old. Either way, “We wear a lot of baggy clothes”, so she chose her most skintight outfit.

She met the director Ali Abbasi in the middle of the day, feeling a little clownish in her Ivana cosplay. They spoke for a couple of hours, “about people growing up in post-communist countries – because [Ivana] was from Czechoslovakia, and I was born and raised in Bulgaria – which shapes your inner world, your thoughts. We talked a lot about the similarities of our stories.”

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