18 Jul 2025

Ari Aster’s Closet Picks

The filmmaker returns to the Criterion Closet, where he praises seventies thrillers like The Parallax View and Straw Dogs , talks about You Can Count on Me and how “no one writes dialogue like Kenneth Lonergan,” and connects Targets to his film Eddington .

Ari Aster: both visits, and whose taste is nearest

choices

19

every one a single film

single films

19

chosen on their own

box sets

0

none this visit

films reached

19

no set to open

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.

1248 Winchester ’73 1950 1064 The Parallax View 1974 329 Lacombe, Lucien 1974 502 Revanche 2008 182 Straw Dogs 1971 396 Ace in the Hole 1951 970 A Face in the Crowd 1957 965 Wanda 1970 97 Do the Right Thing 1989 924 Graduation 2016 1246 The Grifters 1990 1271 You Can Count on Me 2000 36 The Wages of Fear 1953 1202 Lone Star 1996 549 The Last Picture Show 1971 1179 Targets 1968 320 Young Mr. Lincoln 1939 732 My Darling Clementine 1946 1243 No Country for Old Men 2007

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Winchester ’73	Anthony Mann	1950	3
2	The Parallax View	Alan J. Pakula	1974	4
3	Lacombe, Lucien	Louis Malle	1974	1
4	Revanche	Götz Spielmann	2008	1
5	Straw Dogs	Sam Peckinpah	1971	5
6	Ace in the Hole	Billy Wilder	1951	6
7	A Face in the Crowd	Elia Kazan	1957	8
8	Wanda	Barbara Loden	1970	15
9	Do the Right Thing	Spike Lee	1989	20
10	Graduation	Cristian Mungiu	2016	1
11	The Grifters	Stephen Frears	1990	5
12	You Can Count on Me	Kenneth Lonergan	2000	4
13	The Wages of Fear	Henri-Georges Clouzot	1953	7
14	Lone Star	John Sayles	1996	4
15	The Last Picture Show	Peter Bogdanovich	1971	4
16	Targets	Peter Bogdanovich	1968	2
17	Young Mr. Lincoln	John Ford	1939	1
18	My Darling Clementine	John Ford	1946	7
19	No Country for Old Men	Joel Coen, Ethan Coen	2007	8

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1939 to 2016

a single film, at its year 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 19films run 36.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 115.5 minutes of film for each of its 19 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 19 choices had been taken by 5.58 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Four of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Revanche, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Cristian Mungiu, through Graduation and John Sayles, through Lone Star, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com