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For more than 40 years, no single director has more defined what we think of when we think of the movies than Steven Spielberg. To date, his feature films have grossed $4.2 billion in North America, and $9 billion worldwide, more than any other filmmaker in history by a comfortable margin. His movies have been nominated for 122 Academy Awards, and won 31, and Spielberg personally has been nominated for 15 Oscars, winning three (Best Director for Saving Private Ryan, and Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List). And if that’s not enough, Spielberg has also presided over at least two of the most transformative changes of the last 50 years in the movie industry: the creation of the summer blockbuster (with Jaws), and the proliferation of computer-generated imagery in visual effects (with Jurassic Park).

To be sure, Spielberg has not done any of this alone. With George Lucas and Harrison Ford, he helped create Indiana Jones. With Tom Hanks, he established an ongoing creative partnership (and lifelong friendship). His longtime producer Kathleen Kennedy — the woman currently shepherding the revival of Star Wars — got her start as Spielberg's secretary. Just about every one of his films have been tightly edited by Michael Kahn, and majestically scored by John Williams. And he's collaborated with a small stable of top-flight screenwriters, including David Koepp, Richard Curtis, Eric Roth, Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Zaillian, Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner, and, on his newest film Bridge of Spies, Joel and Ethan Coen.

Steven Spielberg on the set of Bridge of Spies.

Jaap Buitendijk / DreamWorks Pictures

When we go to a Spielberg movie, we know we will see a film made with consummate craft and exhilarating visual style — few directors know better how to harness the tools of pure cinema. But I would argue the artistic constant that has informed Spielberg's career and success more than any other has been his seemingly limitless capacity for empathy. "Movies are like a machine that generates empathy," the late Roger Ebert once said. "It lets you understand a bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."

Ebert might as well have been describing Spielberg's entire career, and I know that because, like a crazy person, I recently screened all 28 of Spielberg's theatrical feature films in chronological order, and then ranked them from worst to best. (I sadly chose not to include his celebrated 1971 TV movie Duel, because Spielberg's other two TV movies — 1972's Something Evil and 1973's Savage — are out of print. I also skipped 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, since Spielberg directed just one of five segments in the film.)

By my count, only three of Spielberg's movies are irredeemably bad. The rest range from merely flawed (perhaps deeply so) to among the best films ever made. Here they all are, and the comments are wide open for you to disagree.

28. 1941 (1979)

Universal / Courtesy Everett Collection

Starring: Nancy Allen, Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, John Candy, Bobby Di Cicco, Joe Flaherty, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee, Tim Matheson, Frank McRae, Toshirô Mifune, Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, Wendy Jo Sperber, Robert Stack, Treat Williams

Written by: Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (based on a story by Zemeckis, Gale, and John Milius)

It has long been conventional wisdom that 1941 is Spielberg's worst film, which is likely why it has dwindled into an obscure corner of his career, mentioned in passing, if at all. Well, I am here to tell you that watching this movie now is an exercise in absolute shock. 1941 is meant to be a screwball comedy about the panic that grips Los Angeles in the days after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor plunged America into World War II, but I laughed out loud exactly one time, at a throwaway gag about a ventriloquist dummy. The rest of the time, my mouth hung agape at the parade of inchoate insanity — and misogyny! and racism! — that tumbled onto the screen over an interminable two hours.

One example: Roughly 13 minutes into the film, horndog Capt. Birkhead (Matheson), and general's secretary Donna Stratton (Allen) have this alarming exchange:

Birkhead: "Donna Stratton, after all this time. How long has it been?"
Stratton: "Not long enough."
Birkhead: "Well, you're not still sore are you, Donna?"
Stratton: "Yes, in a number of places."
Birkhead: "Ha ha ha! Same old Donna!"

Eddie Deezen and Murray Hamilton

Universal / Courtesy Everett Collection

And it gets so much worse! A USO emcee (Flaherty) says this into his radio mic after the dance hall has been demolished in a brawl by enlisted soldiers: "I hope you enjoyed tonight's program. I'd like to thank all the GIs for helping to make tonight's evening such a memorable occasion. Maybe in the future we can have Negroes come in and we'll stage a race riot right here." (By the way, that really happened.) There's the moment Col. "Madman" Maddox (Oates) says of Birkhead, whom he mistakes for a spy, "He's a little tall for a Jap. … Check him for stilts." There's the scene in which Candy is covered in black soot, and McRae (the only black actor of any significance in the film) is covered in white flour, and McRae says to Candy, "Hey, get to the back of the tank!" And then there's the sociopathic corporal (Williams) who maniacally chases after a woman who wants nothing to do with him in a running gag played for laughs up to when he actually begins to rape her — at which point I can only assume the laughter was meant to stop until she is saved by that aforementioned tank.

To be fair, some of these are sins of screenwriting and relics of a coarser era. But Spielberg stages all of it with the subtlety of a thumb in the eye, confusing indiscriminate destruction and flop-sweaty mugging for what makes people laugh. What is doubly surreal is that Spielberg brought such a deft and delightful comic touch to his previous three films, and would continue to for so many of his subsequent movies. Spielberg has said he is not embarrassed by 1941, which, OK, maybe he hasn't watched it in a while, like the rest of humanity. But he also never attempted to direct an outright comedy again. Can you blame him?

27. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection

Starring: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri

Written by: Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (from a story by George Lucas)

From the initial shot of the second Indiana Jones movie, you can feel, for the first time in Spielberg's career, the pressure to surpass his past success. It starts with an opening credits rendition of "Anything Goes" performed by nightclub singer Willie Scott (Capshaw), in Mandarin, in a Shanghai establishment called “Club Obi Wan." At one point, Willie and the camera disappear inside a giant, smoking dragon's head, and the movie is overtaken by a fantastical high-stepping tap dance number out of a 1930s musical that makes zero sense in an Indiana Jones movie. From there, the movie shifts into a James Bondian standoff between a Chinese mobster and Indy in a white tux jacket; then into a madcap comedy with Indy scrambling for a poison antidote; and then into a credulity-straining adventure sequence in which Indy, Willie, and Indy's kid sidekick Short Round (Quan) "parachute" out of a crashing plane in an inflatable raft, onto a Himalayan mountainside, and into a raging rapid. "Anything Goes," indeed!

Once Indy, Willie, and Short Round wash up near a small, decimated village in India, the movie finally calms down. But the wonder and joy baked into every second of Raiders of the Lost Ark is replaced in Temple of Doom with a manic, lurid meanness, as an unexpected genre takes root: horror. At his best, Spielberg can stage violence that knocks the wind out of you, but the violence in Temple of Doom is just brazen and grim — shocking, sure, but hollow. The sequence involving Thuggee cult leader Mola Ram (Puri) pulling the still-beating heart out of a screaming human sacrifice famously led to the creation of the PG-13 rating — and yet, ironically, that scene is so grisly that the movie might not have managed to earn that rating today.

Paramount

And I don't even know what to say about what Capshaw goes through in this movie. Temple of Doom marks the beginning of one of the most successful relationships in Hollywood (Capshaw and Spielberg married in 1991), but Spielberg really put her through it here, both physically — that dark room seething with bugs! — and, I would imagine, emotionally. Although Capshaw works overtime to make Willie a likable sexual foil for Indy, she remains a gold-digging, hyperfeminine caricature who is unfortunately timed to the break-ups Spielberg and Lucas were going through while making this film.

And yet, despite all of this, Ford still manages to maintain Indy's integrity, his good humor, and his sense of heroism. That is no small thing, and speaks to how, and how much, the character has endured for nearly 35 years.

26. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Universal Pictures

Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff, Vanessa Lee Chester, Arliss Howard, Peter Stormare, Richard Attenborough

Written by: David Koepp (based on the novel by Michael Crichton)

In 1993, Jurassic Park heralded nothing less than a new era of visual possibility in filmmaking, thanks to the movie's careful, pointed use of cutting-edge computer-generated visual effects.

In 1997, The Lost World: Jurassic Park stands as an essential example of how overusing computer-generated visual effects can make your movie look like crap.

It's crazy how markedly different these two movies look today, given the vast glut of CGI that flooded the movies in the wake of Jurassic Park's success. But again and again, The Lost World grinds to a halt to gawk at the profusion of dinosaurs inside it. Look, a rampaging triceratops! And two T. rexes! And a whole pack of raptors! And since these sequences have almost nothing to do with whatever amounts to a plot in The Lost World, all we can do is ponder how muddy and indistinct its dinosaurs look, especially in comparison to the vivid creatures in Jurassic Park.

This would be tolerable if Spielberg's filmmaking didn't feel so perfunctory. The Lost World is his first film after Schindler's List, made after the launch of DreamWorks SKG held his attention for four years, the longest he's ever gone without directing. You can feel him straining for a reason for this movie even to exist beyond watching dinosaurs chomp on some impressively stupid humans. The only time The Lost World and Spielberg ever really spring to life, in fact, is when a T. rex starts rampaging through San Diego, and the movie becomes, in essence, a parody of itself. Maybe Spielberg should just stop making sequels?

25. Hook (1991)

TriStar Pictures

Starring: Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith, Caroline Goodall, Charlie Korsmo, Amber Scott, Dante Basco

Written by: Jim V. Hart and Malia Scotch Marmo (Based on a story by Hart and Nick Castle, and the play by J.M. Barrie)

Although Spielberg has been tagged as a director obsessed with making movies from a child's point of view, especially in the first half of his career, this is the only one of his films that could be called a "kids movie." Its central conceit — that Peter Pan grew up, started a family with Wendy Darling's granddaughter, and transformed into a work-obsessed killjoy named Peter Banning (Williams) — may apply to the parents in the audience, but everything else about this movie is aimed squarely at their children. The story is basic: Peter's two kids are kidnapped by Capt. Hook (Hoffman), and Peter has to learn how to become Peter Pan again to save them. The acting is broad — Hoffman especially chews the scenery like it's a full-course meal. And the aesthetic is aggressively fake, especially the Neverland sets, which look like the best dioramas ever on a Disney World ride.

Which is fine! I remember devouring this movie as a kid, and thinking Peter's successor Rufio (Basco), a skateboarding punk with three red mohawks, was the coolest person I'd ever seen. As an adult, I can appreciate the uncomplicated diversity of the Lost Boys, and even the film's unapologetically mushy lessons about treasuring your children and honoring your parents. One thing that is not easy on kids or adults? The bloated 140-minute runtime. And Spielberg's penchant for indulging in easy sentimentality is at its apex here: all those glowing shots of the Lost Boys staring at Peter with beatific wonder; all those times Peter's daughter scolds Hook for needing a mommy; all those shots of Roberts, as Tinkerbell, doing nothing but smiling her Julia Roberts smile. I caught myself rolling my eyes more than once, but that is nothing compared to the unfortunate shock of the film's final moment, in which Williams says, "To live… to live would be an awfully big adventure." To be reminded of the circumstances of Williams' death at the end of a movie so steeped in kid-friendly, soft-focus warm fuzzies is not the film's fault, of course. But, still, I screamed.