Steven Spielberg: A selected filmography

Spielberg's first feature film was not for the silver screen but for television. Due to its success, "Duel" was later released in cinemas. In this cheaply produced, incredibly effective thriller, an aggressive tanker truck driver duels with a car driver in a California wasteland. Originally, Spielberg had intended to dispense completely with dialog.

It's the film that birthed the concept of the blockbuster. One of the highest-grossing films ever, Spielberg's gory take of Peter Benchley's great white shark thriller is often quoted as a reason for some people's aquaphobia. Scenes of that rapidly approaching dorsal fin accompanied by that unmistakable Oscar-winning soundtrack by John Williams keep viewers riveted to this day.

Richard Dreyfuss plays a telephone lineman who encounters an unidentified flying object and subsequently becomes obsessed with UFOs. Considered to be one of his masterpieces, Spielberg received his first best director Academy Award nomination for this film. Also praised for its special effects, the film won the Oscar for best cinematography.

The intrepid archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) races against a group of Nazis intent on seizing a unique religious relic that could further their world domination plans. Channeling old-school adventure films, it is a rip-roaring ride with a rousing soundtrack, special effects and comedic banter with co-star Karen Allen who plays Jones' ex, Marion. And who can forget that pit of snakes?

Firmly part of 80s pop culture, E.T. is one of the director's most beloved films. Henry Thomas plays Elliot, a young boy who discovers and befriends the film's titular character, a stranded long-necked alien. It bore the hallmarks of a Spielberg film: stunning special effects (including that bike ride in the moonlight), a John Williams score, and a storyline that had many of us in tears.

An adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, the film was criticized back then among others for downplaying protagonist Celie's (Whoopi Goldberg) lesbianism. However, critics have acknowledged that by making one of the few commercially successful films about the experience of African Americans, Spielberg had paved the way for similar projects to be approved.

The film that put dinosaurs back on the map, and computer-generated imagery, or CGI, in our vocabulary. Spawning several sequels, this blockbuster follows paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) as they tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA — with their primal instincts intact.

In stark contrast, this haunting film also released in 1993, was shot in black and white, underscoring the darkness of the Holocaust. The true story of a group of Polish Jews who avoided Nazi extermination camps with the help of German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) during World War II, it won seven Oscars, including best picture and Spielberg's first Academy Award as best director.

Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including best picture, Spielberg won his second best director Oscar for this film, which was the biggest commercial success of any release in the United States in 1998. Depicting the invasion of Omaha Beach by US troops on D-Day, the 27-minute-long opening scene is considered one of the most memorable in war film history.

In this Pinnochio-like tale set in the future, David (Haley Joel Osment), a highly advanced robotic boy, longs to become a human child to win his foster mother's love, and embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Initiated originally in the 1970s by the late Stanley Kubrik, director of "2001: A Space Odyssey," Spielberg was asked by the former's estate to helm the project in 1999.

Based on a science fiction novella by Philip K. Dick, this action-thriller is set in Washington D.C. in 2054, where the police use psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers way before they commit their crime. Tom Cruise plays the head of this Precrime unit, who then finds himself accused of the future murder of a man he hasn't yet met.

After a terrorist organization kills 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, a team of five men, headed by Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), is assigned to kill the terrorists as revenge. Kaufman starts questioning the morality of the mission as they work off the hit list. Released during Christmas 2005, it wasn't a box office success owing perhaps to the film's dark subject.

This dramatic look at how the Washington Post released the Pentagon Papers features top notch performances by Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Portraying Katharine Graham — the first female publisher of a major American newspaper — and the Post's editor Ben Bradlee, they capture the journalistic buzz of exposing a massive cover-up of government secrets related to the US handling of the Vietnam War.

Marking his first foray into musicals, Spielberg's adaptation is his reimagining of the musical about star-crossed lovers set in 1957 New York City. While it has already spurred Oscar buzz in some circles, other critics have not been all too kind in their reviews, with The New Yorker bluntly stating that Spielberg's remake "is worse than the original."