A Master Filmmaker Opens the Door to His Movie-Buff Brain
Christopher Nolan does Closet Picks, and the genuine genius filmmaker arrives ready to talk cinema with the kind of focus usually reserved for bending time, space and audiences’ brains.
Inside The Criterion Collection’s legendary movie closet, Nolan pulls titles from the shelves while sharing what makes them linger in his imagination. The selections and conversation move across film history, technique, preservation and the strange emotional logic that keeps certain images alive long after the credits roll.
Among the projects he discusses are The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and The Dark Knight, opening a window into the connection between the films he studies and the filmmaking language he has built across his own career.
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Nolan also delivers prime-time food-for-the-brain thoughts on the importance of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, praising its role in protecting, restoring and circulating films that might otherwise remain inaccessible to much of the viewing public.
That preservation-minded enthusiasm fits Nolan perfectly. For all the scale and spectacle attached to his name, he has always spoken about cinema as both an art form and a physical experience—something projected, preserved, revisited and passed from one generation of obsessive moviegoers to the next.
He also praises the way David Lynch evokes dream logic on-screen, where images do not need to behave like ordinary reality to feel emotionally exact. It is the kind of observation that reveals Nolan not only as a filmmaker with strong opinions, but as a lifelong student still energized by the mysteries other directors leave behind.
The joy of the segment is watching someone associated with enormous productions become, very simply, a fan standing in front of too many movies and not enough time. Nolan’s selections become less a definitive ranking than a guided tour through the influences, curiosities and preservation projects that keep his love of cinema moving.
Christopher Nolan’s Criterion Closet Picks
See Nolan inside the Criterion closet as he considers film history, world cinema, David Lynch’s dream logic and the titles he cannot resist pulling from the shelves.
Christopher Nolan explores the Criterion closet and shares the films, filmmakers and preservation work that continue inspiring him. Credit: The Criterion Collection.
Press play on all that love of cinema—and prepare to leave with a considerably longer watchlist.
Watch Christopher Nolan Take on Criterion’s Closet Picks
The filmmaker browses the Criterion shelves while discussing essential restorations, favorite directors and the cinematic ideas that still get his brain firing.
Source: The Criterion Collection.
