Niklas's thoughts

Criterion do a thing called Criterion Closet where celebs come in, pick films from the Criterion collection, and talk about the films. Criterion recently posted the list of the twenty films/boxes that most often are picked from their closet. Here's the list on Letterboxd.

These films on the list represent their respective box sets:

• Opening Night — John Cassavetes: Five Films
• Cléo from 5 to 7 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda
• Playtime — The Complete Jacques Tati
• Nights of Cabiria — Essential Fellini
• Journey to Italy — 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman
• Sans Soleil — La jetée/Sans Soleil: Two Films by Chris Marker

All That Jazz (1979)

Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical musical drama about a self-destructive choreographer balancing filmmaking, women, and mortality.

8½ (1963)

Fellini's surreal masterpiece about a director suffering creative block, blending fantasy and reality in dazzling fashion.

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Cassavetes' intense portrait of a working-class housewife's mental unraveling and her family's struggle to cope.

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Varda's real-time journey of a pop singer awaiting medical results, wandering Paris in existential reflection.

PlayTime (1967)

Tati's visually inventive comedy following Monsieur Hulot through a surreal, modernist Paris of glass and steel.

Blue Velvet (1986)

Lynch's dark descent beneath suburban normalcy, where a college student uncovers a nightmarish underworld.

Wanda (1970)

Barbara Loden's rare gem about a drifting woman who falls in with a petty criminal, a study in aimless survival.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Kubrick's painterly epic tracking an Irish rogue's rise and fall through 18th-century European aristocracy.

Naked (1993)

Mike Leigh's bleakly comic odyssey of a charismatic misanthrope wandering Manchester's underbelly.

La Strada (1954)

Fellini's tender tragedy of a simple young woman sold to a brutish street performer, exploring innocence and redemption.

The Red Shoes (1948)

Powell & Pressburger's ravishing ballet melodrama about art, obsession, and the price of greatness.

Dekalog (1989)

Kieślowski's ten-hour masterpiece, each film exploring one of the Ten Commandments in a Warsaw housing complex.

Yi Yi (2000)

Edward Yang's tender, expansive portrait of a Taipei family navigating love, disappointment, and everyday life.

Down by Law (1986)

Jarmusch's deadpan black-and-white tale of three mismatched convicts escaping a Louisiana bayou prison.

Sans Soleil (1983)

Marker's experimental documentary-essay weaving memory, time, and image across Japan, Africa, and Iceland.

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

De Sica's neorealist classic about a father and son searching postwar Rome for a stolen bicycle essential to their survival.

Journey to Italy (1954)

Rossellini's intimate study of a marriage fraying amid Neapolitan ruins, starring Ingrid Bergman.

Being There (1979)

Peter Sellers' brilliant final role as a simple gardener whose platitudes are mistaken for profound wisdom.

Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Fellini's poignant tale of a Rome streetwalker dreaming of love, showcasing Giulietta Masina's luminous performance.

Opening Night (1977)

Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands explore aging, identity, and theatrical truth in this emotionally raw backstage drama.