It’s never been an all-out love-him-or-hate-him thing — though you can always find a cinephile purist or two to grouse about him

If you’re in the latter camp, then you probably won’t respond much to “Spielberg,” an unabashedly admiring two-hour-and-27-minute documentary portrait of the man and (mostly) his movies that premiered tonight at the New York Film Festival. (It was made for HBO and will debut this coming Saturday on that network.) Yet if, like me, you’re a Spielberg believer, then you’re likely to find this movie an intensely pleasurable double hit of eye candy and mind candy. The film evokes his strengths (and, on occasion, his weaknesses) as a filmmaker with 20-20 critical insight. It’s full of rare home-movie footage that captures Spielberg on the set, and his emergence from the directorial rat pack of the New Hollywood, more intimately than I’ve ever seen those things portrayed.