Back to Spielberg. I think my views are fairly moderate: a skillful craftsman with an ear attuned to the mainstream audience. Spielberg is consciously trying to please the largest possible audience, which sometimes comes off as manipulative, or at least calculated. This applies to [i]Amistad, The Color Purple[/i], and the middle 2-hours of [i]Saving Private Ryan[/i], which I find worth-seeing but a bit stodgy. Actually only three of his films are not worthy of at least a rental:[i]Always, 1941[/i] and [i]The Lost World[/i]. He rarely makes a bad movie but some of us can't accept this because he gets more than his share of media coverage and gets way overrated by Henry et al. After all, does [i]Jurassic Park[/i] say anything about man vs. nature than wasn't said with more grace and style in [i]The Lost World[/i](1924) and [i]King Kong[/i](1933)? Also, some of us remember that the phenomenal success of Jaws inagurated the era of bigger-is-better blockbusters in a Hollywood that had financed some very unique, bold movies in the late 60s/early 70s. Cinephiles over-react by failing to appreciate, perhaps not [i]Schindler's List[/i], but certainly Spielberg's science-fiction films: the extremely effective and entertaining [i]E.T.[/i] and [i]Minority Report[/i], the almost brilliant [i]Close Encounters[/i](a tad schematic but it earns its optimism) and [i]A.I.[/i], who had me thinking about the ambiguous differences between human and nonhuman, and contains decidedly dark undertones. 
So basically my point is: don't confuse Mr. Spielberg with a visionary like Kubrick and Polanski, but remain open-minded and receptive to his gifts.    
   