Robert Zemeckis

1h 44m

Teenagers trying to reach the Beatles on the night of the Ed Sullivan show. The debut, produced by Spielberg.

1h 53m

A genuinely nasty Kurt Russell comedy about rival car lots. A cult favourite.

1h 46m

The hit that got Back to the Future greenlit. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in the jungle.

1h 56m

A perfectly engineered screenplay. Nothing in it is wasted, and the obvious place to start.

1h 44m

Live action and hand-drawn animation sharing a frame and a light source. Still not really surpassed.

1h 48m

The sequel that goes back into the first film and shoots around it.

1h 58m

The western. Gentler than the other two, and the trilogy lands cleanly.

1h 44m

Streep and Hawn, immortal and falling apart. Won the visual effects Oscar.

2h 22m

Six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. The compositing was the point.

2h 30m

Carl Sagan's first-contact novel, taken seriously. Patient in a way nothing else of his is.

2h 23m

Shooting halted for a year so Tom Hanks could lose the weight. Almost no dialogue for an hour.

2h 10m

A Hitchcock pastiche with Harrison Ford, shot during the Cast Away production break.

1h 40m

The first fully motion-captured feature, and the start of a decade he spent on the technique.

1h 55m

Motion capture again, this time R-rated. Neil Gaiman co-wrote it.

1h 36m

Jim Carrey as Scrooge and every ghost. The last of the motion-capture films.

2h 18m

Back to live action after twelve years, with Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot.

2h 3m

Philippe Petit between the towers. The final twenty minutes are vertiginous in 3D and flat without it.

2h 4m

A wartime romance with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. Handsome and inert.

1h 56m

A true story told half in animated dolls. It did not work for anyone.

1h 46m

The Roald Dahl book again, sent straight to streaming.

1h 45m

The live-action Disney remake — not del Toro's, which arrived the same year and is far better.

1h 44m

One fixed camera position across millennia, reuniting the Forrest Gump cast and de-ageing them.