Most cinephiles dream of being in the Criterion Closet, and now, Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz has been in it twice, making his second visit in October after his first in 2023.
While an episode on his recent visit hasn’t been put out yet, the Criterion Collection said that Diaz had picked out David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï, as well as box sets “Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa” and “Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema”.
The Criterion Collection also said that there is “more to come,” which possibly teases a “Closet Picks” video featuring Diaz. Our fingers are crossed. But for now, we look at five of our favorite Criterion “Closet Picks” episodes.
Ayo Edebiri
Comedian, actor, and certified film nerd Ayo Edebiri walks into the Criterion Closet like a kid let loose in a candy store. “Thank you, Criterion, for letting me in the closet. I was disgustingly greedy,” she says at the end of the video.
Edebiri’s selections span continents and moods: Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low and Stanley Donen’s Charade for their precision and charm, Juzo Itami’s The Funeral for its biting satire, and Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger for its bizarre and dark hilarity. She sneaks in Eyimofe (This is My Desire), a 2020 Nigerian indie gem by Arie and Chuko Esiri, which shows that she’s as interested in contemporary global cinema as she is in the canon.
The through-line in Edebiri’s picks is a love of people and the messy worlds they inhabit, the same empathy that grounds her characters in The Bear and Bottoms. “I love movies. I love watching movies. I had a fun time in the closet,” she beams.
Cillian Murphy
Cillian Murphy’s “Closet Picks” episode is as cool and contemplative as you’d expect. “I could stay in here all day,” he says.
His stack is a cinephile’s fever dream: the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta, Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown, Jacques Deray’s La piscine, among several others. He also grabs the full “John Cassavetes: Five Films” box set, particularly A Woman Under the Influence, a movie he calls a “standout.” Murphy ends with “The Wes Anderson Collection,” a charming contrast that hints at his lighter side, featuring 10 of the auteur’s films, including Bottle Rocket and The Darjeeling Limited.
Isabel Sandoval
Leave it to Isabel Sandoval — filmmaker, actress, and deadpan wit — to turn a Criterion Closet visit into a gendered experience. “This is the next best thing to transition in,” she quips. “If I was ever going to be trapped in a closet again, this would be the perfect closet.”
The Filipino filmmaker’s stack is a mix of high romance and high drama, from Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, Ken Russell’s Women in Love, and Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell’s Black Narcissus. She adds The Cranes Are Flying and, for good measure, “The Complete Films of Agnès Varda,” a full collection of Varda’s work from the 1958 short film L’opéra-mouffe to the 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnès. Then, as a blind pick, she grabs Franc Roddam’s Quadrophenia, a rock opera soundtracked by The Who’s 1973 album of the same title.
Maya and Ethan Hawke
Watching Maya and Ethan Hawke in the Criterion Closet feels like dropping in on a family movie night between two generations of film lovers. They trade mini-lectures while pulling out titles that reveal their shared taste for melancholy and humanism: Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, Robert Altman’s 3 Women, and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha and Kicking and Screaming.
Ethan, everyone’s dream cinephile dad, points out Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons and Cassavetes’ Husbands, while Maya brings in Wim Wenders’ dance documentary Pina and Peter Weir’s dreamlike Picnic at Hanging Rock. Their chemistry makes the episode shine and reminds us that love is inherited, argued over, and can be passed down like an heirloom Criterion disc.
Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe’s “Closet Picks” episode is a meditative ritual. The actor is like a monk in a temple, picking films that mirror his intense, searching spirit: Kaneto Shindō’s Onibaba, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror. His choices move between the sacred and the profane, from Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher and its psychosexual rigor to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, where Dafoe played the conflicted Jesus.
There’s an undercurrent of curiosity in everything he touches, whether it’s Seijun Suzuki’s Gate of Flesh or Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone. When he says, “Keep up the good work, Criterion,” it lands like a benediction from one cinematic monk to the others (like us) watching.
