Adam Scott Raids the Criterion Closet — Here Are All His Picks

Adam Scott Walks Into Criterion’s Movie Wonderland and Gets to Picking

Mister Adam Scott has officially made his way into Criterion’s film-wonderland world. The Severance and Parks and Recreation actor is the latest movie lover to step inside the Criterion Closet and start pulling titles from the shelves for a fresh installment of the beloved Closet Picks series.

And Scott does not waste the opportunity. His stack moves from Albert Brooks and Martin Scorsese to Spike Lee, David Lynch, Howard Hawks, Richard Linklater and the Dardenne brothers — the kind of shelf raid that says the man came prepared to actually talk movies, not merely pose beside them.

There are crowd-pleasers in here, but Scott’s list is nicely unruly. Defending Your Life sits beside The Irishman; Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape shares space with Do the Right Thing and The Big Chill. Then he veers toward Blue Velvet, because apparently we are not leaving the closet without a little David Lynch unease.

Adam Scott’s Criterion Closet Picks

• Defending Your Life — Albert Brooks, 1991
• The Irishman — Martin Scorsese, 2019
• sex, lies, and videotape — Steven Soderbergh, 1989
• Do the Right Thing — Spike Lee, 1989
• The Big Chill — Lawrence Kasdan, 1983
• Blue Velvet — David Lynch, 1986
• His Girl Friday — Howard Hawks, 1940
• The War Room — Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, 1993
• The Before Trilogy — Richard Linklater
• The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years
• Two Days, One Night — Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

It is a very Adam Scott sort of haul: comedy with existential dread, American independents, obsessive auteurs, political documentary, screwball speed and a whole lot of people making questionable life choices beautifully. In other words, a film shelf with range.

The Criterion Closet has become one of those deceptively simple internet pleasures: put a filmmaker, actor or movie obsessive in a room full of physical media and let taste do the talking. Scott fits the format perfectly because his enthusiasm feels less like a promotional stop and more like somebody being given permission to raid the best video store that never closed.

What makes his picks especially fun is the lack of one neat lane. Scott can move from Brooks to Scorsese, Lee to Lynch, Hawks to Linklater and still make the whole stack feel personal. That is the real appeal of Closet Picks: not a definitive canon, just somebody’s movie brain spilling onto a table.

Watch Adam Scott’s Criterion Closet Picks

Criterion’s 9-minute episode follows Scott through his selections as he talks through the films and filmmakers he wanted to take home.

Source: The Criterion Collection.