8 Apr 2026

Bob Odenkirk’s Closet Picks

The actor, director, and writer shares his love for the physical comedy of Jackie Chan, praises the timeless beauty of The Red Shoes, and talks about discovering noir classics like The Big Heat and In a Lonely Place on the Criterion Channel.

Bob Odenkirk: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

13

9 single, 4 box sets

single films

9

chosen on their own

box sets

4

one choice, many films

films reached

29

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 Police Story / Police Story 2 SET Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar SET Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits 1239 Scarface 1932 1101 Uncut Gems 2019 1269 The Big Heat 1953 650 A Man Escaped 1956 624 Quadrophenia 1979 17 Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom 1976 44 The Red Shoes 1948 178 My Life as a Dog 1985 810 In a Lonely Place 1950 SET America Lost and Found: The BBS Story

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Police Story / Police Story 2 box set, 2 films			7
2	Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar box set, 6 films			5
3	Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits box set, 5 films			9
4	Scarface	Howard Hawks	1932	1
5	Uncut Gems	Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie	2019	6
6	The Big Heat	Fritz Lang	1953	1
7	A Man Escaped	Robert Bresson	1956	8
8	Quadrophenia	Franc Roddam	1979	6
9	Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom	Pier Paolo Pasolini	1976	11
10	The Red Shoes	Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger	1948	16
11	My Life as a Dog	Lasse Hallström	1985	7
12	In a Lonely Place	Nicholas Ray	1950	4
13	America Lost and Found: The BBS Story box set, 7 films			7

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1932 to 2019, box sets 1968 to 1988

Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits

Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar

America Lost and Found: The BBS Story

Police Story / Police Story 2

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 29films run 49.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 229 minutes of film for each of its 13 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 13 choices had been taken by 6.77 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was The Big Heat, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Benny Safdie, through Uncut Gems and Josh Safdie, through Uncut Gems, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com