27 Oct 2025

June Squibb’s Closet Picks

The actor shares her longtime love for the films of Akira Kurosawa, talks about seeing Children of Paradise at an art-house cinema in the 1940s, and fondly recalls riding a scooter with Richard Roundtree.

June Squibb: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

9

7 single, 2 box sets

single films

7

chosen on their own

box sets

2

one choice, many films

films reached

24

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.

2 Seven Samurai 1954 SET Yojimbo / Sanjuro: Two Samurai Films by Akira Kurosawa 35 Diabolique 1955 141 Children of Paradise 1945 1130 Shaft 1971 866 Buena Vista Social Club 1999 1018 Paris Is Burning 1990 913 The Age of Innocence 1993 SET Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Seven Samurai	Akira Kurosawa	1954	10
2	Yojimbo / Sanjuro: Two Samurai Films by Akira Kurosawa box set, 2 films			2
3	Diabolique	Henri-Georges Clouzot	1955	2
4	Children of Paradise	Marcel Carné	1945	5
5	Shaft	Gordon Parks	1971	1
6	Buena Vista Social Club	Wim Wenders	1999	1
7	Paris Is Burning	Jennie Livingston	1990	11
8	The Age of Innocence	Martin Scorsese	1993	7
9	Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975 box set, 15 films			8

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1945 to 1999, box sets 1954 to 1975

Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975

Yojimbo / Sanjuro: Two Samurai Films by Akira Kurosawa

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 24films run 40.8 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 271.7 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 5.22 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Buena Vista Social Club, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Wim Wenders, through Buena Vista Social Club, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com