Steven Spielberg's best movies

Steven Spielberg's best movies

There are moments when I believe that Steven Spielberg and I were separated at birth.

Seriously, the parallels in our lives are almost too numerous to count.

He got a model train set when he was 12; I got a model train set when I was 12. He crashed his train set; I crashed my train set.

I guess I was wrong. That's all we have in common.

Where our lives took entirely different paths started right after he crashed those trains. I crashed mine accidentally; he crashed his on purpose.

The story of how he crashed his train set has become the stuff of Hollywood legend. No sooner had his father bought him that set of Lionel trains than young Steven decided that it was more fun to watch them crash than it was to watch them operate normally on an oval track.

And when he tired of watching them crash, he pulled down his father's 8mm movie camera from the top of the closet, and filmed his trains crashing head-on.

He went on to become one of the most popular and entertaining filmmakers of all time, and I went on to write this sentence.

As I said, the parallels are uncanny.

I've got Spielberg on the brain this week for two reasons. First, June 12 was the 30th anniversary of the opening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," one of the greatest action movies in Hollywood history, and second, Spielberg is about to take over the summer movie and TV season.

I'm not kidding. He is the producer of a new TV series about aliens called "Falling Skies," and he produced not one, not two, but three movies about aliens that are opening in theaters - "Super 8," "Transformers" and "Cowboys & Aliens."

Admit it; there is some part of you that is interested in all four projects just because his name is associated with them. Even if you don't like the genre, you know there is going to be some entertaining aspect to these four projects, even though Spielberg did not write or direct any of them. How many times has Steven Spielberg disappointed you in a movie theater? He hasn't been perfect ("Hook" and "1941" come to mind), but his track record is pretty solid.

That record is so impressive that what I am about to attempt is the journalistic equivalent of walking between two high-rise buildings on a thin wire without a net. It's foolish. It's stupid. It's one more thing that separates me from the director.

He would never waste time ranking Steven Spielberg movies, but that is exactly what I am about to do. What kind of an idiot would compile a list that includes such divergent movies as "Schindler's List" and "Jaws?"

I'll tell you what kind of idiot would do that - the kind of an idiot who gets a train set as a present, crashes the trains and isn't smart enough to film it.

Here are Steven Spielberg's greatest cinematic achievements, including one television movie.

1. "Jaws" (1975) - The movie that literally invented the summer event movie category. This is the movie that scared a nation out of the ocean for a couple of decades. With the help of composer John Williams, a few musical notes have haunted the movie public for more than three decades.

2. "Schindler's List" (1993) - If it was possible to make Nazis look even worse than usual, this movie did it.

3. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) - Included one of the funniest and most memorable scenes in any action movie. Faced with a superior warrior wielding a sword, Indiana Jones plays dirty and shoots the guy. Only an incredible filmmaker could have created such a heroic and likable hero that nobody thought there was anything wrong with bringing a gun to a knife fight.

4. "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) - Who hasn't piled their mashed potatoes into a mountain?

5. "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) - "Phone home" became part of the lexicon, and Drew Barrymore stole every scene she was in.

6. "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) - Many believe it is the best war movie ever made, and the opening D-Day landing sequence might be the most chilling ever put on film.

7. "Munich" (2005) - An inside look at an Israeli hit team that was anything but perfect.

8. "Jurassic Park" (1993) - Remember when you thought a Tyrannosaurus was the baddest dinosaur in the hood? Who ever heard of a Velociraptor before this movie, let alone thought they were the scariest thing since Great White sharks?

9. "Duel" (1971) - The lone TV movie on the list, but a pretty big clue as to the bright future of this young filmmaker. Is it possible for you to look in your rear-view mirror on the freeway and not think of this movie?

10. "The Color Purple" (1985) - Spielberg switched gears, and added a new color to his crayon box.