19 May 2026

David Tennant’s Closet Picks

The actor praises Terry Gilliam’s extraordinary imagination, talks about the subtle beauty and intelligence of Brief Encounter, and examines what made Laurence Olivier’s Shakespearean performances so remarkable.

David Tennant: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

6

4 single, 2 box sets

single films

4

chosen on their own

box sets

2

one choice, many films

films reached

11

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.

37 Time Bandits 1981 158 The Importance of Being Earnest 1952 SET David Lean Directs Noël Coward 849 His Girl Friday 1940 SET Olivier’s Shakespeare 591 12 Angry Men 1957

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Time Bandits	Terry Gilliam	1981	3
2	The Importance of Being Earnest	Anthony Asquith	1952	2
3	David Lean Directs Noël Coward box set, 4 films			7
4	His Girl Friday	Howard Hawks	1940	12
5	Olivier’s Shakespeare box set, 3 films			1
6	12 Angry Men	Sidney Lumet	1957	11

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1940 to 1981, box sets 1942 to 1955

Olivier’s Shakespeare

David Lean Directs Noël Coward

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 11films run 20.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 208.8 minutes of film for each of its 6 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 6 choices had been taken by 6 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Olivier’s Shakespeare, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Terry Gilliam, through Time Bandits, who has been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com