1) Schindler’s List
How strange is it that Spielberg can still be considered by some a mere provider of ‘entertainment’ after Schindler’s List? Especially after the scene in which he shows you German soldiers routinely executing sick Jews in their hospital beds, or the one in which piles of bodies are gleefully burned as a drunken officer shoots into the pile. Or, you know, any scene involving Ralph Fiennes.
Fiennes is terrifying in Schindler’s List even when he’s doing nothing, but the scene in which his concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth uses the boy who’s just insufficiently cleaned his bath tub as target practice is perhaps the worst of the lot.
This is Steven Spielberg at his most downbeat, proving once and for all he’s not just some family-friendly helmer.