Ron Shelton’s Closet Picks

[@bluerev]

"Great f*n picture, kid" - Billy Wilder.

[@twomindz79]

I cant imagine Wilder saying that. That's why it's great .

[@alexcamacho4880]

Uncensored Billy Wilder. It doesn't get any better than that.👌

[@seminalzing6358]

Nothing brings me more joy than seeing people go to the criterion closet and acting like a kid in the candy store. Excellent picks! 🎥👌

[@agenttheater5]

Funny in this case - re in Some Like It Hot when Jerry/Daphne was telling Joe/Josephine about how being on a train with an all-girl jazz band reminds him of a dream he had when he was a kid of being locked in a candy shop overnight

[@seminalzing6358]

@@joguess87 oh yeah? Sue me.

[@hack1872]

Love seeing Ron Shelton in the Criterion closet, maker of two of the great sports films of all time - Bull Durham and White Man Can't Sleep. Great point about film lengths and how some of the great movies were under two hours. Reminder to get his new book.

[@fromthehaven94]

White Men Can't Jump

[@PentameronSV]

0:08 - *THE LADY VANISHES* _dir. Alfred Hitchcock_ (1938) 0:23 - *STRAW DOGS* _dir. Sam Peckinpah_ (1971) 0:46 - *BADLANDS* _dir. Terrence Malick_ (1973) 1:27 - *SOME LIKE IT HOT* _dir. Billy Wilder_ (1959) 1:51 - *HIS GIRL FRIDAY* _dir. Howard Hawks_ (1940) 2:19 - *ON THE WATERFRONT* _dir. Elia Kazan_ (1954)

[@Njbear7453]

I have straw dogs, on the waterfront , and some like it hot (for Xmas) 😂

[@nicklager1666]

Really true words there you dont need to make a feature that are 4 or 5 hours long. Of course if the script and vision you have ends up there is a different story but still. Badlands was my first introduction to Terrence Malick and while i could see the mans greatness it didnt click for me. His approach to filmmaking and how he portrays a feature was so new to me that i wasnt ready for it at all. I have grown to like him more and more of course.

[@tonywilthshire308]

Fantastic picks

[@atulyabharadwaj2279]

Marvelous images

[@markelijio6012]

@@atulyabharadwaj2279 One filmmaker who does it all.

[@tonyfarinella]

I just finished his book on the making of Bull Durham. Highly recommend! Ron is a character and I agree with him that short is good. Be brief, be brilliant.

[@JD-tf1kn]

...and NATO would prolly approve of this. (NATO being the National Association of Theatre Owners) If a film is a little to a fair amount less than 2 hours then you can fit in 5 shows a day (rather than 4..between noon and midnight. Intermission generally should be between a half hour and an hour. Your film will gross more, earlier in its release, and have greater potential to be number one in grosses opening weekend. Audiences are not as dumb as we'd like to think. This is an unwritten rule of exhibition.

[@ledeyabaklykova]

The late Sydney Pollack once quipped in a Q&A that “the movies i like mirror in minutes the ideal temperature of the human body. Yes, my own films are way longer than that but i prefer to watch a movie that does its business effectively and commendably in 95 to 100 minutes.”

[@tonyfarinella]

@@ledeyabaklykova that’s an excellent quote from one of the greatest directors of all-time. I’d love to see more of his films in the collection!

[@DJGamingSmash]

"I need to be disturbed a bit this week" I think I'm on this dude's wavelength. Straw Dogs is a bit of a mood, watched that Criterion recently and loved it.

[@Njbear7453]

Very very very good movie

[@Njbear7453]

Probably can’t watch for another 6 months 😂😂😂

[@throckmorton3705]

on straw dogs, the composer jerry fielding really killed it … he reworked igor stravinsky’s la histoire du soldat (the soldiers tale).

[@Njbear7453]

On the waterfront is so EPIC!!!! Karl Malden’s monologue though.....

[@bored1ca]

What a great selection of films he chose! Kudos Mr. Shelton!!

[@mainchannel1566]

"Short is good." THANK YOU! Someone tell this to Netflix executives so they stop producing 12 episode seasons with 9 episodes of plot.

[@roachboy8583]

Watch Irma Vep and be exposed to content.

[@Njbear7453]

The average script should be 80 -90 pages that’s one hour and twenty - thirty minutes tops.

[@tommyt1971]

It's OK Ron, few people knew what Pauline Kael was talking about but her reviews are fascinating anyway.

[@chrissoto6331]

This is a epic closet haul

[@triplejazzmusicisall1883]

Brilliant films - all of them.

[@gnalkhere]

Oh you folks are SPOILING us, unlike Ron Shelton restraining himself, it seems. And what a smooth J cut to the credits

[@akf2000]

I think it's an L cut but well spotted!

[@carlosmujicarodriguez]

Thank you for the list at the end :)

[@nerd_in_norway]

FINALLY someone in the closet points out the problem with modern films being too damn long! I'm so sick and tired of (in particular) Hollywood studios thinking silly action entertainnment and popcorn films having to be 3 hours long. Gimme a break, literally. To quote Hitchcock: the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

[@Arl662]

Couldn't agree with him more. "Short is good." A lot of films runtimes are so unnecessary.

[@alexcamacho4880]

A Long Beach harbor "On The Waterfront". Instant classic.

[@southwestkinema9149]

At last. A director picks a bunch of movies and I have seen and rate all of them highly. We have good taste Ron 😊

[@filmbuster2619]

Seeing him drop the digipak in the bag at the end and hearing the sound of it hitting the cases... he must have dented it

[@tommyt1971]

Some Like It Hot always gets my vote for funniest American movie. Jack Lemmon stole the entire movie and everyone else was great too. - But Jerry, you're a guy and why would a guy wanna marry a guy?? - Security!!

[@erikandersenphoto631]

I would like a 3 1/2 hour Criterion Closet video though!

[@RingoandCarlin]

Charade and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World are underrated classic films. Also would have been good if he'd taken some Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd silent movies too

[@TheGhostOfJohnWicksBeagle]

Thank you for making White men Can't Jump. burnt into memory since i was a kid.

[@romanclay1913]

HIS GIRL FRIDAY script is 160 pages. The film is 90 minutes. That's some rapid dialogue. Oscars for Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.

[@Njbear7453]

Is this a good Howard hawks movie ? Or a bad one ? What about “only angels have wings?”

[@romanclay1913]

@@Njbear7453 His Girl Friday is the greatest comedy ever made.

[@Njbear7453]

@@romanclay1913 really? I will take that into consideration, thank you :)

[@romanclay1913]

@@Njbear7453 kzbin.info/www/bejne/nYbKkqmLbptmf5I Free on KZbin

[@markelijio6012]

Uh, Honorary Oscar Winners Cary Grant (1970), Rosalind Russell (1973) and Howard Hawks (1975), according to actress/choreographer/dancer Bonita, best known for her debut in Herbert Ross' Oscar nominated family picture, The Turning Point (1977) at Disney from Fall 1994 to present.

[@oo88oo]

Great picks!

[@Maximillionaire666]

Ron Shelton is dressed like Reynolds Woodcock looking sharp

[@kotkaconforza]

Where's our Criterion Tin Cup?

[@charoleawood]

I love Tin Cup, great movie. I also enjoy Armageddon, which is on the collection

[@chubbs.mp3435]

They need to put white men can’t jump in the collection, best basketball movie.

[@charoleawood]

@@chubbs.mp3435 I need to see White Man Can't Jump! I've actually not really watched any basketball flicks. Baseball seems to be the most popular kind of sports film (certainly it was in the 80s and 90s). Not a lot of sports films getting made any more. This is the age of the musician biopic.

[@toddpinkstonisgod]

@@chubbs.mp3435 Yep, I've loved that movie since I was a kid. Even Stanley Kubrick apparently liked it a lot!

[@perspicaciouscritic]

@criterioncollection, when are you all going to get #GusVanSant on?

[@ACD1994]

Aww this video felt too short. Ron Shelton, could have said a lot more interesting thoughts on his film selections.

[@charoleawood]

Hollywood Homicide is, no joke, one of my absolute favorite films of all time, and for that reason Ron Shelton is a hero to me. I STRONGLY disagree about film runtimes, however. Let stories be told without artificial limits, or minimum requirements, on runtime. Some movies shouldn't be any longer than a 10 minute kids cartoon episode, other films are too short even at 160 minutes (I feel the theatrical version of James Cameron's Avatar is far too rushed, for instance). Some things would be better as serialized TV productions, and some (many) TV shows are waaaay too invested in spinning their wheels when they'd be better suited to telling a full story in a more limited span.

[@heliumtrophy]

I prefer him saying "short is good" because the tendency these days is that everything needs to be 3 and a half hours when it could be summed up in 95. If a film has the scope of Lawrence of Arabia - there's nothing wrong with that but there needs to be some efforts at toning down the unnecessary excess.

[@charoleawood]

​@@heliumtrophy I wonder sometimes why distributers put pressure on films to be shorter though. A lot of very successful films have been fairly lengthy. I thought this year's "Batman" was a terrible movie but it did well enough critically and commercially even at three hours long. So, no, don't pad your movie, but also don't truncate it. Let your story breathe, three hours may indeed be too short. I love Bakshi's Lord of the Rings and prefer it to Jackson's, but I can see that at 132 minutes it's too rushed. One could even argue that LotR deserves to be longer than nine hours. On the other hand, don't pump your story full of hot air either. I don't think Breaking Bad deserved to be a seventy hour story and it would have made a much better 90 minute flick. I think 2016's "Blood Father", for instance, is excellent even at just 88 minutes. 1941's Dumbo is a perfect movie and it's just 64 minutes! The bottom line is that I don't want dogma and stricture dictating story length, so I disagree with "short is good" as much as I do "long is good" --- neither is good or bad and should not be made into blanket statements.

[@28Pluto]

@@charoleawood The entire story arc and character development of Breaking Bad could never be told in 90 minutes. It's a TV series, not a movie. If you don't like 70 hour stories, don't watch TV series.

[@charoleawood]

@@28Pluto I'm just saying that even a four hour film is a LOT shorter than a seventy hour TV show. If we recognize that some stories deserve seventy hours (we'll have to agree to disagree about Breaking Bad) then we should also recognize that some deserve two-and-a-half or thee. We shouldn't say, "movies shouldn't be longer than two hours".

[@Njbear7453]

Straw dogs is one of peckinpah’s best

[@Pontiki1977]

who are all these people making videos from inside my closet?? put that dvd back please.

[@ledeyabaklykova]

Cool. Time to get Greta Gerwig and her partner (who I believe is a filmmaker as well) in the C. Closet!

[@morefour4]

Are you joking? Lol her partner, Noah Baumbach, has three movies in the collection that he directed and a two more that he wrote

[@ssjmichael]

@@morefour4 She said in the closet, not the collection. There is no criteiron closet with Gerwig and Baumbach

[@morefour4]

@@ssjmichael I’m referring to the fact she said “her partner (who I believe is a filmmaker as well)” pointing out if you’re a criterion fan you should arguably know her husband more than her because he’s featured heavily

[@chiefscheider]

@@morefour4 I always get a kick out of ppl like Ledeya who post things like "who I believe is a filmmaker as well" when they clearly know. And if they weren't sure, why wouldn't they confirm it before commenting? People are funny

[@gfmmi]

With all due respect, sir, Tin Cup is 2 hours 14 mins. That being said, earlier this year I convinced a guy who said he didn’t like the movie to admit that he actually liked it.

[@kc449]

why isn't straw dogs available on the app?

[@Njbear7453]

Maybe I should try out some early Hitchcock? I enjoyed vertigo and north by northwest but I tried watching rear window and turned it off

[@johnoconnor4616]

Criterion is there a sale this month?

[@sebasapolo]

Yes, friday

[@Able406]

@@sebasapolo source?

[@olavbjortomt1596]

@@Able406 It's the November 50% sale on the Barnes and Noble website, plus their stores

[@Able406]

@@olavbjortomt1596 you’re right

[@ACD1994]

Some like it hot is a great movie. Very progressive for its time.

[@Njbear7453]

I’m getting it for Christmas can’t wait to watch!

[@modernbuster]

"Im not a Hitchcock fan"...moves on to the next closet video...

[@sebastian11346]

So nobody likes Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons anymore?

[@southwestkinema9149]

Haha. Too obvious. Gotta be high brow and seem more interesting than you are in the closet. That’s why like Ron’s picks.

[@sebastian11346]

​@@southwestkinema9149 „Gotta be high brow” - wtf!

[@charoleawood]

Citizen Kane is a movie one can't get away from when it comes to classic film discussion, but this is the first I've heard of The Magnificent Ambersons. Surely "Touch of Evil" is more frequently referenced.

[@Ragerr]

WHITE MEN CANT JUMP SO UNDERRATED

[@jeffreystrain2651]

At last, someone else is complaining about the length of the movies.

[@Kev_Cos]

I have zero problems watching long movies, it's just today there are so many average movies that are drawn out over 2 hours and full of filler which makes them so much worse. For example I watched Amsterdam in the cinema recently and even though cutting 40 minutes wouldn't have made it much better, there was still 40 minutes of utterly needless scenes thrown into that movie. You could wipe the whole Amsterdam sequence out of it and the movies plot doesn't miss it one bit.

[@jeffreystrain2651]

If it is done well. It takes a talented director to make it work.

[@tectorgorch8698]

Dear RonShelton, when I saw White Men Can't Jump I thought it would go far to heal the festering racial wounds of L.A. -- I believe L.A. burned to the ground a few months later. I don't blame you. Furthermore, "Short is good" -- that's what she said -- never. Say Hi! to Lolita for me.

[@debbiesroommate]

'Not an Alfred Hitchcock fan'. Your films are so much better than his 😂

[@jexes23]

Not a fan of Hitchcock….. Blasphemy.

[@DeanH92]

Imagine pretending to not be a Hitchcock fan, just for attention. Good grief, some people are strange.

[@thequitestupid]

Lady vanishes is tops for me and it NEVER gets chosen in these videos

[@guzinmusic]

subtitles would be appreciated❤️ @CriterionCollection