Steven Spielberg is one of the best filmmakers in history.
The master filmmaker got his start working on television before he made his first feature-length film, a television movie called Duel, starring Gunsmoke veteran Dennis Weaver as someone stalked by a murderous truck driver.
After a smaller movie with Goldie Hawn called The Sugarland Express, Spielberg hit the big-time with his third movie Jaws in 1975, the film that some say created the modern-day summer blockbuster.
Since that time, he has made some of the best films of all-time, from sci-fi films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Time to giant action movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park.
Along the way, Spielberg has picked up seven Oscar nominations (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, and Lincoln), winning twice for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.
He also has nine of his movies that received Best Picture nominations at the Oscars, with the films E.T., The Color Purple, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, War Horse, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, and The Post.
With so many great Steven Spielberg movies to choose from, there are also several Spielberg films available to stream on Netflix.
Raiders of the Los Ark (1981)
In 1981, Steven Spielberg directed a movie that paid homage to his childhood favorites of boy’s only adventure movies. This film was Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Fans can see everything that Spielberg loved in these old adventure movies from his childhood that often played out themselves like serials, with cliffhangers at the end of each episode, but in a feature-length film that remains one of the best action movies in cinema history.
Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones, a university professor and archeologist in the 40s who also heads out occasionally as a treasure hunter to secure essential items from history, so they don’t fall into the wrong hands.
In this case, Indiana Jones is seeking the Biblical artifact, the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can find it and use it to give them the power to take over the world.
On Netflix, fans will find this Steven Spielberg movie under the title Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
The sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark is also available to stream on Netflix, along with the original movie.
The second film in the Indiana Jones series is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It’s considered one of the strangest films in the franchise as Indiana Jones has to deal with black magic and voodoo.
This movie was actually a prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which eliminated the need to have Nazis in the film series and put Indiana Jones in a very different situation.
The artifact here is a mysterious stone, but Indiana Jones is also sent to find some missing children and release them from a cult that makes human sacrifices.
The movie is much darker and included the memorable brain-eating moment. This also introduced one of the franchise’s most beloved characters in Short Round (The Goonies’ Jonathan Ke Quan).
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
While Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a polarizing movie for fans of the original, things really picked back up again in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.
This movie teams Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones up with his father, who he has not seen in many years, Sean Connery’s Henry Jones, Sr.
This time around, the artifact is the legendary Holy Grail that the father and son are trying to protect, and when they meet up with an ancient Templar protecting it.
For fans who think the fourth movie in the Indiana Jones series jumped the shark, they obviously forget about ancient Templars, eating brains at a voodoo ceremony, and faces melting when the Ark of the Covenant opened.
Indiana Jones has always been all the right kind of crazy.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
The fourth Indiana Jones movie is also on Netflix for fans of action movies.
This is the least liked movie of the franchise and the most polarizing, as fans claimed that the series jumped the shark with the introduction of aliens.
The fact that there were almost 20 years between Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade likely made people forget that Indiana Jones movies always included supernatural elements.
This movie jumped ahead of the World War II storyline and had an older Indiana Jones looking for treasure during the Cold War, while Russians were the new enemy (with Cate Blanchett as the lead villain here).
This movie also added a new wrinkle with Shia LaBeouf starring as the possible son of Jones and what was, at the time, the future of the franchise.
It never happened.
Schindler’s List (1993)
The top critically acclaimed movies of Steven Spielberg’s career came in the ’90s, and neither were fun action movies. They were historical films.
One of them is Saving Private Ryan, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, with five wins, including Best Director for Spielberg. Shakespeare in Love beat the film for Best Picture.
The other is on Netflix and was even more successful.
That film was Schindler’s List in 1993.
The movie picked up 12 Oscar nominations and won seven of them. Unlike Saving Private Ryan, this won the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay awards.
The movie is about Oskar Schindler, a Polish businessman in Nazi-controlled Poland who saved over a thousand Jewish refugees in World War II.
The cast was also impressive, with Liam Neeson as Schindler, and a supporting cast that included Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley.
Jurassic Park (1993)
The same year that Steven Spielberg released his top critically acclaimed movie in Schindler’s List, he also made a movie that changed the world of cinema.
That movie was Jurassic Park, and that is the movie that is the genesis for almost every action movie Hollywood makes today.
Before Jurassic Park was made, effects in action movies were almost always practical. For Jurassic Park, CGI finally reached the level where it could create realistic dinosaurs in the film.
It was better than anyone ever expected, with some of the best-looking dinosaurs in any movie.
The movie is about a scientific team that took dinosaur DNA and created clones of dinosaurs to open an amusement park. Things immediately went wrong when the dinosaurs got loose and ran rampant on the island.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
While not as popular as the first Jurassic Park movie, The Lost World: Jurassic Park was the only other movie in the franchise that had Steven Spielberg as director.
While stars Sam Neill and Laura Dern didn’t return, Jeff Goldman was back as Malcolm this time around in the lead role, alongside newcomers Julianne Moore and Pete Postlethwaite.
The movie took place four years after the events of the first film. John Hammond sends a team to his second island that his company owns to oversee the study on the animals and bring some dinosaurs back to the United States.
Malcolm knows this is a bad idea and does what he can to try to stop it before they can accidentally release the dinosaurs in America.
War Horse (2011)
The newest Steven Spielberg movie on Netflix is his historical war movie, War Horse.
Unlike Spielberg’s past war movie that won him a bunch of awards in Saving Private Ryan, this was not so much about the violence and horrors of war but is a story about a boy and his horse. However, the horrors of war are still on display in this tale.
The main character of the movie is Joey, a Thoroughbred horse raised by a British teenager named Albert. The British Army buys the horse and sends it into World War I to serve the country.
Joey then has several encounters through the war, meeting various people and having several owners throughout Europe, all while the horrors of war happen around him.
Four years later, Albert enlists in the war and miraculously is reunited with his beloved horse.
The cast is incredible, with Jeremy Irvine starring as Albert and a supporting cast that includes Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Toby Kebbell.
The film picked up six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but went home empty-handed.
Stream these Steven Spielberg movies and much more on Netflix right now.