8 Jun 2026

Thomas Bangalter’s Closet Picks

The musician, producer, and composer praises the sonic world of Brian De Palma’s movies, shares why he thinks The Color of Pomegranates is the most beautiful film ever made, and discusses what The Game taught him about the interplay between fiction and reality.

Thomas Bangalter: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

8

7 single, 1 box set

single films

7

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

10

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.

543 Modern Times 1936 89 Sisters 1973 611 Being John Malkovich 1999 406 Martha Graham: Dance on Film 1959 918 The Color of Pomegranates 1969 SET The Qatsi Trilogy 627 The Game 1997 1108 The Celebration 1998

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Modern Times	Charles Chaplin	1936	3
2	Sisters	Brian De Palma	1973	3
3	Being John Malkovich	Spike Jonze	1999	6
4	Martha Graham: Dance on Film	Nathan Kroll	1959	2
5	The Color of Pomegranates	Sergei Parajanov	1969	7
6	The Qatsi Trilogy box set, 3 films			7
7	The Game	David Fincher	1997	4
8	The Celebration	Thomas Vinterberg	1998	4

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1936 to 1999, box sets 1983 to 2002

The Qatsi 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

9 of its 10 films carry a runtime, and those alone run at least 14.6 hours. The other one is unmatched, so the real figure is higher. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

What one of its choices was worth is not published for this visit. That figure divides the whole runtime by every choice, so a total missing one film would understate it rather than be approximately right.

How unusual this haul was

Its 8 choices had been taken by 4.5 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 Martha Graham: Dance on Film, taken by 2 visits in total.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com