The terminal and ready player one are far from Spielberg’s worst. Have you seen 1941? The BFG?? Tintin???
The original Apocalypse Now is much better than the Redux. The whole scene at the plantation just kills the pacing and doesn't add as much insight as Coppola thought it did.
The Conversation is excellent. haven't seen any of The Godfather films in years, but putting them up at the top is an unquestionably solid take (even if they're not your favorites). will one day watch Apocalypse Now.
Megalopolis as a big political statement is a total mess, but as a film about love and hope and putting everything you have into the creation of art, I find it as moving as The Fablemans.
sorta related to this idea, I truly believe that the best movies come out of filmmakers being forced to be creative, and I think Spielberg in general is a little bit a victim of his own success in that he was so wildly successful financially that he never had the gun to his head again so-to-speak whereas Coppola often did a quick example being Peter Jackson and the quality of Fellowship of the Ring vs literally any and everything he has made since that point, the rest of the LOTR trilogy included
It is interesting to see how all the big New Hollywood directors responded to their big failures as the industry shifted to blockbusters. Coppola was essentially broken by One from the Heart and never recovered. Scorsese fell into drug addiction and almost died after New York, New York but he returned with his best movie. People remember 1941 as a failure, but it was financially successful and Spielberg kept making iconic films. I wonder if Spielberg would have shifted to more serious films earlier in his career if he didn't have iconic blockbuster after iconic blockbuster. Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters, and Raiders of the Lost Ark all happen in a seven year stretch.
The Conversation is excellent and I like that has a Tony Scott connection because Enemy of the State works as a spiritual spin-off to it.
I feel that a lot of it has to do with the age of the directors. You are looking at things fundamentally differently when you know you are closing out your life versus a younger filmmaker who has only just begun.