Every Steven Spielberg Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Saving Private Ryan Tom Hanks
Paramount Pictures

Though the Vietnam War has generally wrought the most intoxicating and existential war movies, Spielberg's sprawling WWII classic is a masterpiece in its own right, and was infamously robbed of a Best Picture Oscar by Shakespeare in Love (though Spielberg still won Best Director, mercifully).

From its punishing opening Omaha Beach sequence through to its emotionally shattering finale, Saving Private Ryan is a perfect funnel for the director's best and worst instincts: stylistic audacity, tender humanism and sentimentality.

Because the journey depicted throughout is so soul-achingly strenuous, even the final push into tear-jerking territory can't do anything to hurt it.

The ensemble is fantastic, Janusz Kamiński's cinematography is out of this world, and it's an almost peerlessly visceral entry into the genre.

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.