I grew up with Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” so it does have a special place in my heart. Do I believe it’s one of Spielberg’s best films? Not by a long shot. But there are many out there who do.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve leaned more towards “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jaws” or even “Schindler’s List” as the definitive statements of Spielberg’s career.
The man himself was a guest on Colbert last night and mentioned that he doesn’t really rewatch his movies but, if he had to choose, “E.T.” would probably be the “perfect” movie of his career.
“I don’t look a lot at my movies after I’ve made them […] I don’t look back too often but every once in a whikle I’ll see a movie with my kids. Sometimes I see things that I had intended to do that I didn’t do, and sometimes I see things that would have been a better idea than what I’m now seeing all these years later – but for the most part, ET is a pretty perfect movie.”
He continued: “It’s one of the few movies I’ve made that I can actually look back at again and again. [There’s] only a handful of movies I can watch more than once. I’ve made like 34 films and – I’m not gonna name which ones they are beyond ET – there’s about five or six films that I can watch again, but I don’t usually do that.”
Last September, I polled 85 critics and asked them to name their top Spielberg movies. The results were quite fascinating. “E.T.” finished fifth, right behind “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Schindler’s List” and poll topper “Jaws.”
Spielberg currently has no new projects lined up for production but he is working on getting Stanley Kubrick’s “Napoleon” screenplay greenlit as an HBO limited series.