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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Johatsu review – poignant account of Japan’s ‘voluntarily disappeared’

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Melancholy documentary follows the owner of a ‘night moving’ business in Japan, helping people abandon their own lives

‘Johatsu” means evaporation in Japanese, and is used to refer to those people who choose to disappear, severing all ties with their past lives and their families. It became a phenomenon in Japan in the 1960s, and intensified during the 1990s as the country struggled with a debt crisis. While some plot their departures on their own, others call on the services of “night movers”: companies that help people vanish without trace.

Following the owner of one such business named Saita, Andreas Hartmann’s and Arata Mori’s poignant documentary surveys the circumstances that drive people to desperate measures. Unfolding like a suspense thriller, the opening sees a man hurriedly get inside Saita’s van, his voice trembling with fear. Unable to cope with a possessive partner, he finally manages to flee. Interviews with Saita’s other clients reveal that, besides financial catastrophes, domestic abuse is often a catalyst for escape. At the same time, the reasons for a disappearance are not always clear-cut, and the film not only lends an ear to the “evaporated” but is also sympathetic to the abandoned, who are left with gnawing questions and no answers.

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