14 Jul 2025

Wyclef Jean’s Closet Picks

The composer, producer, and performer shares what he learned from La Bamba, talks about seeing his community reflected in Menace II Society, and praises the vibrancy of Black Orpheus.

Wyclef Jean: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

5

4 single, 1 box set

single films

4

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

6

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.

105 Spartacus 1960 1193 La Bamba 1987 SET The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester 1105 Menace II Society 1993 48 Black Orpheus 1959

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Spartacus	Stanley Kubrick	1960	3
2	La Bamba	Luis Valdez	1987	2
3	The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester box set, 2 films			2
4	Menace II Society	Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes	1993	4
5	Black Orpheus	Marcel Camus	1959	10

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1959 to 1993, box sets 1973 to 1974

The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester

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 6films run 11.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 143.2 minutes of film for each of its 5 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 5 choices had been taken by 4.2 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester, taken by 2 visits in total.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com