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And I'm not at all fond of Spielberg. Jaws is, by far, his best movie.
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Yes, Jaws is still his best film, I agree. The three characters make it very special. I think Spielberg's early films had charm and humanity, up to and including Raiders. They had great moments, beyond the thrills, like Richard Dreyfuss crushing his plastic cup in mockery of Robert Shaw's beer can crushing machismo, or Brody sheepishly looking at his appendix scar as the other two are comparing battle scars. Raiders is full of those little moments too, great bits of visual wit like the Nazi turning the terrifying looking torture weapon into a clothes hanger, or real humanity like Jones saying "it ain't the years honey, it's the mileage" and falling asleep exhausted in what should have been the love scene.
I really like Close Encounters too, and Duel is a great B-movie. But at some point in the 80s he seemed to decide that his films had to be either "serious drama" for adults or empty, whizz-bang saccharine for arrested adolescents, forgetting that his real talent had been to find the sweet spot between the two.