

Watching Steven Spielberg’s latest feature, Ready Player Oneis an exercise in constant disorientation: it is truly befuddling to watch one of the major architects of the modern blockbuster imitating the big-budget tentpoles that were themselves inspired by the genuine articles that Spielberg forged through the ’70s and ’80s. (Imagine the Beatles recording an album of Oasis covers.) But that the source novel for this film exists at all testifies to the vast sweep of Spielberg’s imprint on pop culture — indeed, for many, the Spielberg name is synonymous with American pop culture itself. His films flickered through generations of childhoods and command nostalgia still today, Ready Player One being Spielberg’s grandest monument to himself.

The characters of Ready Player One treat the run of films from Spielberg’s production company Amblin as holy scripture, with players studying them down to the most minute detail. You too can share in the slavish devotion to another man’s obsessions by taking a look into this week’s column, which collects a handful of crowd-pleasing picks from the Amblin archives.