26 Mar 2025

Franklin Leonard’s Closet Picks

The producer and founder of the Black List praises Don Cheadle’s and Denzel Washington’s performances in Devil in a Blue Dress, talks about why everyone who wants to work in Hollywood should see Bamboozled, and selects favorites by Charles Burnett and Alice Diop.

Franklin Leonard: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

9

8 single, 1 box set

single films

8

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

16

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.

963 To Sleep with Anger 1990 1135 Devil in a Blue Dress 1995 1073 Memories of Murder 2003 1019 Bamboozled 2000 958 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 2007 738 Tootsie 1982 SET Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist 1218 Anatomy of a Fall 2023 1212 Saint Omer 2022

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	To Sleep with Anger	Charles Burnett	1990	11
2	Devil in a Blue Dress	Carl Franklin	1995	7
3	Memories of Murder	Bong Joon Ho	2003	3
4	Bamboozled	Spike Lee	2000	5
5	4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days	Cristian Mungiu	2007	2
6	Tootsie	Sydney Pollack	1982	11
7	Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist box set, 8 films			1
8	Anatomy of a Fall	Justine Triet	2023	5
9	Saint Omer	Alice Diop	2022	5

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1982 to 2023, box sets 1925 to 1979

Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist

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

Its 16films run 26.3 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 175.2 minutes of film for each of its 9 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 9 choices had been taken by 5.56 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Paul Robeson: Portraits of the Artist, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Bong Joon Ho, through Memories of Murder, Carl Franklin, through Devil in a Blue Dress, Charles Burnett, through To Sleep with Anger, Cristian Mungiu, through 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Justine Triet, through Anatomy of a Fall, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com