Acknowledgements
Introduction: the Critical Context
1. Close Encounters of the Third Kind: tripping the light fantastic
2. Duel: the descent of Mann
3. The Sugarland Express: a light comedy?
4. Jaws: searching the depths
5. 1941: war on Hollywood
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark: lights, camera, action
7. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: turn on your love light
8. Twilight Zone: The Movie: magic lantern man overshadowed
9. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: anything goes
10. The Color Purple: sisters and brothers
11. Empire of the Sun: shanghai showmanship
12. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: cut to the chase
13. Always: light my fire
14. Hook: an awfully big Pan(a)vision adventure
15. Jurassic Park: another monster hit
16. Schindler's List: darkness visible
17. The Lost World: Jurassic Park: more digital manipulation
18. Amistad: black and white in colour
19. Saving Private Ryan: Hollywood on war
20. A.I. Artificial Intelligence: eyes wide open
21. Minority Report: through a glass, darkly
22. Catch Me If You Can: captured on celluloid
23. The Terminal: all that jazz
24. War of the Worlds: rays in the mirror
25. Munich: bitter fruit on the olive branch
26. Audiences, subjectivity and pleasure
Bibliography
Index

Cinema's most successful director is a commercial and cultural force demanding serious consideration. Not just triumphant marketing, this international popularity is partly a function of the movies themselves. Polarised critical attitudes largely overlook this, and evidence either unquestioning adulation or vilification¿often vitriolic¿for epitomising contemporary Hollywood. Detailed textual analyses reveal that alongside conventional commercial appeal, Spielberg's movies function consistently as a self-reflexive commentary on cinema. Rather than straightforwardly consumed realism or fantasy, they invite divergent readings and self-conscious spectatorship which contradict assumptions about their ideological tendencies. Exercising powerful emotional appeal, their ambiguities are profitably advantageous in maximising audiences and generating media attention.