403 visits to the closet

Criterion lets a guest into a room of shelves and films them taking whatever they want. This site counts what they took, and measures it against the 1,718 films that were there to take.

first visit: 22 Sept 2010
latest visit: 16 Jul 2026
per visit: 7 median, 24 most
rebuilt: Mondays 06:00 UTC

guests

423

10 have been back

things chosen

3,312

8.22 per visit on average

films reached

1,264

73.6% of the collection

box sets taken

102

counted as one choice each

What comes off the shelf

Ranked by visits that took it, so a guest who names a film twice still counts once. A box set is one choice, never the thirty-nine films inside it.

Spine	What came off the shelf What came off	Visits that took it Visits
set	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set	30
set	The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set	21
97	Do the Right Thing Spike Lee, 1989	19
724	All That Jazz Bob Fosse, 1979	18
set	The Complete Jacques Tati box set	18
140	8½ Federico Fellini, 1963	17
219	La strada Federico Fellini, 1954	16
set	Essential Fellini box set	15
965	Wanda Barbara Loden, 1970	15
307	Naked Mike Leigh, 1993	14

single film box set

The most-taken thing in the closet is not a film. John Cassavetes: Five Films has been picked 30 times, half again as often as Do the Right Thing. Counting only single films would have hidden that, and would have reported Agnès Varda as a one-time pick rather than the 21-visit favourite she is.

The shelf

Every film in the collection sits at a spine number. This is where guests actually reach.

single-film picks only · 1,260 of 1,718 releases carry a spine number

Films taken from this 50-spine band

160

Spine number

Table view

Single-film picks by 50-spine band
Spine band	Single-film picks
1-49	145
50-99	108
100-149	133
150-199	100
200-249	128
250-299	93
300-349	107
350-399	69
400-449	77
450-499	65
500-549	112
550-599	100
600-649	92
650-699	117
700-749	135
750-799	82
800-849	135
850-899	109
900-949	129
950-999	146
1000-1049	145
1050-1099	160
1100-1149	103
1150-1199	109
1200-1249	106
1250-1299	47
1300-1349	5

Guests reach across the whole shelf rather than clustering in the early canon. The busiest band is 1050-1099. Only the last two bands fall away, and those discs are months old.

Coverage

How much of the collection has ever left the shelf, in sixteen years of visits.

49.0% taken as single films 454 never reached, in any form

1,264

842

1,718

taken as a single film: 842 reached only inside a box set: 422 more never reached: 454

Table view

The collection by how it has been reached
How it was reached	Films	Share of the collection
taken as a single film	842	49.0%
reached only inside a box set	422	24.6%
never reached	454	26.4%
the whole collection	1,718	100.0%

By decade of release
1920s	79%	19/24
1930s	54%	69/128
1940s	60%	79/131
1950s	74%	146/197
1960s	80%	279/349
1970s	79%	209/266
1980s	77%	157/205
1990s	79%	145/184
2000s	82%	73/89
2010s	71%	47/66
2020s	49%	35/71

By country
United States	80%	464/579
France	69%	190/277
Japan	62%	134/216
United Kingdom	70%	100/142
Italy	76%	67/88
Sweden	83%	55/66
Germany	60%	24/40
Hong Kong	79%	30/38
Iran	37%	11/30
Canada	79%	15/19
India	56%	10/18

top eleven countries by shelf size

Spine 1 has never been picked

Grand Illusion (1937), Jean Renoir. The film Criterion numbered first has not been taken on any of the 403 visits, alone or in a set. It is one of 454.

Growth

A curiosity for a decade, a production line since 2022. Two measures on two scales means two charts: never one plot with two axes.

Visits filmed

105

no visits recorded in 2020

complete year 2026, through 16 July

Table view

Visits filmed each year
Year	Visits filmed	Things chosen	Films new to the site
2010	1	8	8
2011	7	37	46
2012	4	22	36
2013	4	27	27
2014	9	76	76
2015	9	104	88
2016	14	122	92
2017	17	168	111
2018	13	103	66
2019	3	31	7
2020	·	·	·
2021	6	57	57
2022	28	224	126
2023	56	450	167
2024	78	633	182
2025	105	802	145
2026	49	448	30

Films reached, cumulative

1,264

the curve has not bent: guests keep finding new films

Table view

Films reached by the end of each year
Year	Films reached, cumulative
2010	8
2011	54
2012	90
2013	117
2014	193
2015	281
2016	373
2017	484
2018	550
2019	557
2020	557
2021	614
2022	740
2023	907
2024	1,089
2025	1,234
2026	1,264

2025 visits filmed 105 things chosen 802 films new to the site 145

Every chart on the site carries a hover layer: a per-mark tooltip on bars and cells. No value lives only in a tooltip. Each chart has a table view that carries the same numbers.

Directors

Counted as visits that reached for them, whether by a single film or a box set. Counting the films inside each set would rank Criterion's packaging, not anyone's taste.

directors with at least three films in the collection

Director	Visits that reached for them Visits	Of their shelf reached Shelf
Federico Fellini	56	14 of 14
John Cassavetes	55	7 of 7
Ingmar Bergman	48	41 of 41
Akira Kurosawa	46	17 of 27
Martin Scorsese	38	8 of 11
David Lynch	38	7 of 8
Spike Lee	32	3 of 4
Michael Powell	31	9 of 11
Pier Paolo Pasolini	30	13 of 13
Jim Jarmusch	30	6 of 6

Fellini and Cassavetes lead because both have a box set in heavy rotation. Bergman is reached by 48 visits and has the widest shelf of the three: all 41 of his films in the collection have been reached by someone.