12 Aug 2026

Matthew McConaughey’s Closet Picks

The actor selects Italian-cinema favorites, talks about how being cast in Dazed and Confused changed his life, and shares his experience working with John Sayles on Lone Star.

Matthew McConaughey: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

every one a single film

single films

chosen on their own

box sets

none this visit

films reached

no set to open

Watch on Vimeo

This one is not on Criterion's YouTube channel, and their Vimeo copy will not play outside criterion.com · 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.

140 8½ 1963 702 The Great Beauty 2013 738 Tootsie 1982 720 The Big Chill 1983 247 Slacker 1991 336 Dazed and Confused 1993 414 Two-Lane Blacktop 1971 999 Matewan 1987 1180 Thelma & Louise 1991 1198 Mean Streets 1973 1202 Lone Star 1996 1260 Basquiat 1996 904 Election 1999 1060 Amores perros 2000

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	8½	Federico Fellini	1963	18
2	The Great Beauty	Paolo Sorrentino	2013	2
3	Tootsie	Sydney Pollack	1982	11
4	The Big Chill	Lawrence Kasdan	1983	7
5	Slacker	Richard Linklater	1991	5
6	Dazed and Confused	Richard Linklater	1993	7
7	Two-Lane Blacktop	Monte Hellman	1971	5
8	Matewan	John Sayles	1987	6
9	Thelma & Louise	Ridley Scott	1991	9
10	Mean Streets	Martin Scorsese	1973	8
11	Lone Star	John Sayles	1996	4
12	Basquiat	Julian Schnabel	1996	1
13	Election	Alexander Payne	1999	5
14	Amores perros	Alejandro G. Iñárritu	2000	10

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1963 to 2013

a single film, at its year 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 14films run 27.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 119.7 minutes of film for each of its 14 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 14 choices had been taken by 7 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Basquiat, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Alexander Payne, through Election, John Sayles, through Lone Star and John Sayles, through Matewan, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com