17 Nov 2025

Alex Winter’s Closet Picks

The actor and director praises Iranian cinema legends Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, shares why he considers Luis Buñuel to be “the grand master of cinema,” and reminisces about spending his childhood at the movie theater.

Alex Winter: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

7

6 single, 1 box set

single films

6

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

9

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.

SET The Koker Trilogy · No Bears 2022 1212 Saint Omer 2022 309 Ugetsu 1953 334 Harlan County USA 1976 1289 Él 1953 1033 The Cameraman 1928

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Koker Trilogy box set, 3 films			7
2	No Bears	Jafar Panahi	2022	1
3	Saint Omer	Alice Diop	2022	5
4	Ugetsu	Kenji Mizoguchi	1953	4
5	Harlan County USA	Barbara Kopple	1976	6
6	Él	Luis Buñuel	1953	1
7	The Cameraman	Edward Sedgwick	1928	8

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1928 to 2022, box sets 1987 to 1994

The Koker Trilogy

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 9films run 14.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 125.4 minutes of film for each of its 7 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 7 choices had been taken by 4.57 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was No Bears, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Jafar Panahi, through No Bears, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com