With 'Disclosure Day,' the director returns to a longtime preoccupation. Two Times staffers explore his ongoing fascination with extraterrestrials.

For roughly the first three decades of his career, Spielberg tended to take a fairly sanguine view of aliens, refusing to succumb to the disaster-movie framework of aliens attacking terrified Earthlings. That changed in a big way after 9/11, when Spielberg made a couple of Tom Cruise -starring sci-fi blockbusters grappling with a changed world.

Steven Spielberg’s fourth film about alien encounters is “Disclosure Day,” following “ET: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” That inspired us to take another look at what Roger Ebert thought about some of the most famous and infamous alien movies,

From Close Encounters to Disclosure Day, here's every Steven Spielberg movie featuring aliens or extraterrestrial life, and where to watch them.

Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla ...

A moment early on in “Disclosure Day” will instinctively feel familiar to anyone who grew up with Steven Spielberg films. A TV weather report predicts hail. The camera pans downward,