As far as I'm concerned no American filmmaker has had a better decade. three artful and accomplished if flawed SF films and two artful and accomplished if flawed non-SF films. And one glaring misstep called The Terminal.
My philosphy on such things -- films/writing -- is that if you're not a genius, then tell the story simply. Hitchcock was a genius. So was Welles.
What I find discouraging in film is that many of the directors of "film heads" who just reference other movies to a distracting degree. I'd put Spielberg in that category. Though I could be wrong on this, I used to put Martin Scorsese in there as well and he blew me away with The Aviator.