It seemed to take forever before the studio was releasing movies. Autumn 1997 saw the theatrical releases begin. By then, Dreamworks had several not too successful TV series, including Ink (starring Ted Danson), but did hit a home run with Spin City, guided by the steady hand of Gary Goldman, who had given us Family Ties in the 1980s. After Robert Zemeckis, Goldman has most astutely harnessed Michael J. Fox's sparky persona which shines through in all that he does.

Somewhat painfully now (but hindsight is both a useful and useless thing - often simultaneously) the studio's debut movie was The Peacemaker, directed by ER director Mimi Leder. The film, about dealing with a terrorist threat, focused on globetrotting Colonel Tom Devoe, portrayed by George Clooney, during his seemingly interminable ascent towards bona fide movie stardom. The movie was a play-it -safe launch project and for many was not the all-out spectacular curtain raiser they were expecting from the studio. Soon after, MouseHunt opened ' a complete opposite, which hinted at the kind of moves the studio was to continue making on the moviemaking chessboard. MouseHunt was family fantasy and humour of the best sort which also brought a new director to the fore, Gore Verbinski. Is this guy the new Ivan Reitman ' Other comedies ensued ' Paulie the Parrot, Forces of Nature (starring Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock) and earlier this year The Mexican ' directed by Verbinski. Studio co-founder, Steven Spielberg, directed Amistad which opened in December 1997. How could this and the deeply underrated and personal The Postman (Warner Brothers) have fared so badly against Titanic '

It was 1998 when the studio really hit its stride with the release of Saving Private Ryan which at the very least proved that a 'summer movie' can be a sombre affair. Deep Impact was a disaster movie with a compelling and believable drama as its pulse. Spielberg had seriously considered it as a directorial project but ultimately executive produced it. Its driving theme of everyday people finding a deep bond with another in the face of chaos carries a resonance now that could never have been anticipated when it was made. Movies matter, just like all stories do. Many of the best ones help remind us of the better angels of our nature, to borrow a phrase from Abraham Lincoln. Saving Private Ryan did the same.

DreamWorks' pursuit of the bold, fresh and invigorating pulled 1998 to a resounding close with The Prince of Egypt - a notably adult and mature animated feature. The subtlety of the facial animation is astonishing and counterpoints wonderfully the huge sweep of so much of the movie. For those who think classical animation can only be for young eyes then they should watch this. It remains one of Dreamworks best films to date.

Given the acorn from which Dreamworks grew it is no surprise that animation forms such a major part of its output. After The Prince of Egypt the studio next classically animated piece was El Dorado ' a playful but perhaps less distinctive piec e than Prince. No matter. The studio by this time had already released its first computer animated film Antz, a witty and inventive comedy set in an ant colony. It contrasted nicely with Pixar's A Bug's Life. However, it was in 2001 that Dreamworks truly hit a home run with animation when they released the CG feature Shrek. On the surf ace, a comedy with many funny and fun ideas (notably the imprisonment of fairy tale characters) the film had believable and recognisable human emotion to it. A true fairy tale about belonging and individuality. It is a film that is flat out beautiful to look at. Even the use of contemporary pop music works wonderfully. And maybe, just maybe, one of Dreamworks' other artists - Nelly Furtado - filmed in Shrek's swamp for the Turn Off the Light promo. Evidently, Shrek's fusion of spectacle and emotion has truly registered with audiences. Now, we await the release of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron in May 2002. From the images so far made available it seems to be another beautiful film with its naturalistic characters and environments, drawing no doubt on the gamut of America's finest landscape artists and communicators of the West.

Having truly established its drama credentials with the already iconic Saving Private Ryan ( leading to the mature and compelling Band of Brothers which strives not to distract the audience every ten seconds but instead dwells and enjoys the silences ) Dreamworks produced American Beauty ' the story of a middle aged man redefining his life and coming to enjoy it once more and live more richly. For anyone who has read Upton Sinclair's novel Babbit or Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road it carries many of the same ideas around the tensions and strains of suburban America. Again, in the post September 11th age we now live with a better ( and certainly renewed ) sense I think of the stuff that really matters - family, love, true contentment. Maybe we tailchase the trivial stuff a little less these days. Lester Burnham had enough of the trivia ' he was after something more. Alan Ball's screenplay for the film combines satire with warmth in this story of fragile souls ' recall Annette Bening going to tears as she shows a couple around a house. Amazingly it is the film of a first time director, the British theatre ace Sam Mendes. Mendes returns to the screen next year with Tom Hanks and Jude Law in The Road to Perdition. Hanks had initially expressed great interest in the Lester Burnham role in American Beauty - a film with one of the strongest scores of recent years. The studio landed right on target again with Gladiator - for all its spectacle, really the story of man who just wants to go home. Director Ridley Scott nailed the need to put the personal story ahead of the glorious vision of ancient Rome. With Cast Away, Robert Zemeckis small story of a man marooned on a desert island, audiences were shown the value of silence and solitude in a film that is a Dreamworks classic and is one of Zemeckis' best films. It is a classic American tale of how a wilderness allows a man to get a clearer sense of himself. Henry David Thoreau did something of the same thing all those years ago when he went o his cabin at Walden pond.

Dreamworks' commitment to intelligent entertainment shone through again in summer 2001 with the truly stunning AI ' Spielberg's imagining of Kubrick's take on Brian Aldiss's short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long. Suffice to say it was Spielberg's first screenplay since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was also one of the strongest films he has ever made ' up there with The Sugarland Express, Hook, Empire of the Sun and ET. Its box office reception was muted. For me, at least, I think and hope it will only gain in stature over time.

After seven years ( excuse me while, rather like Marty McFly might, I do a double take and check my watch), Dreamworks has established itself as a major creative force in Hollywood. Not since Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks established Untied Artists in Hollywood's earliest years has a studio been established by storytellers as opposed to managers and executives. The difference shines through every time in the choices SKG makes in order to captivate us, transport us and entertain us.