414 visits to the closet
Criterion lets a guest into a room of shelves and films them taking whatever they want. This site counts what they took, and measures it against the 1,736 films Criterion has released.
What comes off the shelf
Ranked by visits that took it, so a guest who names a film twice still counts once. A box set is one choice, never the 40 films inside the largest of them.
| Spine | What came off the shelf What came off | Visits that took it Visits |
|---|---|---|
| set |  John Cassavetes: Five Films box set | |
| set |  The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set | |
| 97 |  Do the Right Thing Spike Lee, 1989 | |
| set |  The Complete Jacques Tati box set | |
| 140 |  8½ Federico Fellini, 1963 | |
| 724 |  All That Jazz Bob Fosse, 1979 | |
| set |  Essential Fellini box set | |
| 219 |  La strada Federico Fellini, 1954 | |
| 44 |  The Red Shoes Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948 | |
| 965 |  Wanda Barbara Loden, 1970 |
The most-taken thing in the closet is not a film. John Cassavetes: Five Films has been picked 30 times, half again as often as Do the Right Thing. Counting only single films would have hidden that, and would have reported Agnès Varda as a one-time pick rather than the 24-visit favourite she is.
The shelf
Every film in the collection sits at a spine number. This is where guests actually reach.
single-film picks only · 1,263 of 1,736 releases carry a spine number
Spine number
Table view
| Spine band | Single-film picks | Share of these picks |
|---|---|---|
| 1-49 | 148 | 5.0% |
| 50-99 | 113 | 3.8% |
| 100-149 | 137 | 4.6% |
| 150-199 | 102 | 3.5% |
| 200-249 | 132 | 4.5% |
| 250-299 | 97 | 3.3% |
| 300-349 | 110 | 3.7% |
| 350-399 | 71 | 2.4% |
| 400-449 | 79 | 2.7% |
| 450-499 | 65 | 2.2% |
| 500-549 | 114 | 3.9% |
| 550-599 | 101 | 3.4% |
| 600-649 | 94 | 3.2% |
| 650-699 | 119 | 4.0% |
| 700-749 | 143 | 4.8% |
| 750-799 | 84 | 2.8% |
| 800-849 | 138 | 4.7% |
| 850-899 | 110 | 3.7% |
| 900-949 | 133 | 4.5% |
| 950-999 | 151 | 5.1% |
| 1000-1049 | 153 | 5.2% |
| 1050-1099 | 167 | 5.7% |
| 1100-1149 | 110 | 3.7% |
| 1150-1199 | 112 | 3.8% |
| 1200-1249 | 108 | 3.7% |
| 1250-1299 | 51 | 1.7% |
| 1300-1349 | 7 | 0.2% |
Guests reach across the whole shelf rather than clustering in the early canon. The busiest band is 1050-1099. Only the last two bands fall away, and those discs are months old.
Coverage
How much of the collection has ever left the shelf, in 16 years of visits.
Table view
| How it was reached | Films | Share of the collection |
|---|---|---|
| taken as a single film | 851 | 49.0% |
| reached only inside a box set | 422 | 24.3% |
| never reached | 463 | 26.7% |
| the whole collection | 1,736 | 100.0% |
Spine 1 has never been picked
Grand Illusion (1937), Jean Renoir. The film Criterion numbered first has not been taken on any of the 414 visits, alone or in a set whose contents are on record. It is one of 463. Not a verdict on the film: nothing here reads whether a title was in print on the day of a visit, so a film nobody picked may be a film that was not in the closet to pick. What this misses says what was checked by hand for this one.
Growth
A curiosity for a decade, a production line since 2022. Two measures on two scales means two charts: never one plot with two axes.
the curve has not bent: guests keep finding new films
Table view
| Year | Films reached, cumulative | New that year |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 8 | 8 |
| 2011 | 54 | 46 |
| 2012 | 90 | 36 |
| 2013 | 117 | 27 |
| 2014 | 193 | 76 |
| 2015 | 281 | 88 |
| 2016 | 373 | 92 |
| 2017 | 484 | 111 |
| 2018 | 550 | 66 |
| 2019 | 557 | 7 |
| 2020 | 557 | 0 |
| 2021 | 614 | 57 |
| 2022 | 740 | 126 |
| 2023 | 907 | 167 |
| 2024 | 1,089 | 182 |
| 2025 | 1,234 | 145 |
| 2026 | 1,273 | 39 |
Every chart on the site carries a hover layer: a crosshair and tooltip on lines and areas, a per-mark tooltip on bars and cells. No value lives only in a tooltip. Each chart has a table view that carries the same numbers.
Directors
Counted as visits that reached for them, whether by a single film or a box set. Counting the films inside each set would rank Criterion's packaging, not anyone's taste.
directors with at least three films in the collection
| Director | Visits that reached for them Visits | Of their shelf reached Shelf |
|---|---|---|
| Federico Fellini | 14 of 14 | |
| John Cassavetes | 7 of 7 | |
| Ingmar Bergman | 41 of 41 | |
| Akira Kurosawa | 17 of 27 | |
| Martin Scorsese | 9 of 11 | |
| David Lynch | 7 of 8 | |
| Michael Powell | 9 of 11 | |
| Spike Lee | 3 of 4 | |
| Pier Paolo Pasolini | 13 of 13 | |
| Emeric Pressburger | 7 of 8 |
Fellini and Cassavetes lead because both have a box set in heavy rotation. Bergman is reached by 49 visits and has the widest shelf of the three: all 41 of his films in the collection have been reached by someone.