4 Sept 2025

Reginald Hudlin’s Closet Picks

The writer, director, and producer praises Black Orpheus and Killer of Sheep as his favorite works of Black cinema, talks about the influence of Risky Business on his film House Party , and admires the depth of Bruce Lee’s performance in Enter the Dragon

Reginald Hudlin: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

8

5 single, 3 box sets

single films

5

chosen on their own

box sets

3

one choice, many films

films reached

28

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.

48 Black Orpheus 1959 1262 Killer of Sheep 1977 1105 Menace II Society 1993 1227 Risky Business 1983 1129 Rouge 1987 SET Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films SET Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits SET Essential Fellini

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Black Orpheus	Marcel Camus	1959	10
2	Killer of Sheep	Charles Burnett	1977	2
3	Menace II Society	Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes	1993	4
4	Risky Business	Paul Brickman	1983	2
5	Rouge	Stanley Kwan	1987	2
6	Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films box set, 4 films			11
7	Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits box set, 5 films			9
8	Essential Fellini box set, 14 films			16

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1959 to 1993, box sets 1950 to 1987

Essential Fellini

Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits

Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films

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 28films run 50.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 381.9 minutes of film for each of its 8 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 8 choices had been taken by 7 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 Rouge, taken by 2 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Charles Burnett, through Killer of Sheep, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com