7 Jan 2017

Ben Wheatley’s Closet Picks

A voracious cinephile, the British director shared his thoughts on some of his favorite titles in the collection, noting his love for the camera movements in Grey Gardens and the terror he felt watching Things to Come as a child.

Ben Wheatley: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

12

11 single, 1 box set

single films

11

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

36

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

154 The Horse’s Mouth 1958 123 Grey Gardens 1975 414 Two-Lane Blacktop 1971 660 Things to Come 1936 42 Fishing with John 1992 2 Seven Samurai 1954 SET Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman 667 Seconds 1966 555 Sweet Smell of Success 1957 533 Crumb 1995 869 Rumble Fish 1983 748 Watership Down 1978

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Horse’s Mouth	Ronald Neame	1958	2
2	Grey Gardens	David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer	1975	10
3	Two-Lane Blacktop	Monte Hellman	1971	5
4	Things to Come	William Cameron Menzies	1936	4
5	Fishing with John	John Lurie	1992	1
6	Seven Samurai	Akira Kurosawa	1954	10
7	Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman box set, 25 films			1
8	Seconds	John Frankenheimer	1966	7
9	Sweet Smell of Success	Alexander Mackendrick	1957	9
10	Crumb	Terry Zwigoff	1995	7
11	Rumble Fish	Francis Ford Coppola	1983	5
12	Watership Down	Martin Rosen	1978	4

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1936 to 1995, box sets 1962 to 1973

Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

35 of its 36 films carry a runtime, and those alone run at least 55.2 hours. One of the others is a television series, which has no total on record at all: TMDB gives one episode's length, not a series'. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

What one of its choices was worth is not published for this visit. That figure divides the whole runtime by every choice, so a total missing one film would understate it rather than be approximately right.

How unusual this haul was

Its 12 choices had been taken by 5.42 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Francis Ford Coppola, through Rumble Fish and Terry Zwigoff, through Crumb, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com