Wes Anderson Walks Into Criterion and Leaves With Taste to Spare
Wes Anderson inside the Criterion Closet was always going to be dangerous. Give the man behind The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom a wall of beautifully restored cinema and three minutes to roam? Of course the results were going to be exquisitely specific.
Criterion caught Anderson inside its Mobile Closet at the Hollywood Bowl during the July weekend devoted to Music from the Films of Wes Anderson. The traveling replica of Criterion’s legendary New York closet was stocked with more than 1,700 films, giving the filmmaker a proper playground for a round of Closet Picks.
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Build a Little Wes Anderson Film Shelf
Start with Criterion’s official Closet Picks collection, then dig into physical editions from Anderson’s own selections.
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The choices move across decades, countries and filmmaking styles, but the Anderson fingerprints are easy to spot: precise compositions, heightened worlds, sharp comedy, romantic melancholy and directors who know exactly what they want every inch of the frame to do.
Wes Anderson’s Criterion Mobile Closet Picks
His nine-film haul runs from Hitchcock and Lubitsch to Satyajit Ray and recent animation standout Flow.
- The 39 Steps — Alfred Hitchcock, 1935
- The Red Shoes — Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948
- Heaven Can Wait — Ernst Lubitsch, 1943
- Design for Living — Ernst Lubitsch, 1933
- The Lady Eve — Preston Sturges, 1941
- Stagecoach — John Ford, 1939
- Flow — Gints Zilbalodis, 2024
- Tootsie — Sydney Pollack, 1982
- Charulata — Satyajit Ray, 1964
Two Ernst Lubitsch films in one visit tells you plenty. So does The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger’s ravishing Technicolor fever dream, and Satyajit Ray’s exquisitely observed Charulata. Then Anderson swerves into Tootsie and the wordless animated Flow, because a good film shelf should never feel like homework.
The Hollywood Bowl setting made the whole appearance even more perfectly Wes. Criterion brought the Mobile Closet to Los Angeles as part of a three-day celebration built around the concert series, complete with screenings, special merchandise and a temporary Criterion Cinema. The Closet itself is a traveling replica of the company’s famous Manhattan room, with essentially the same collection packed into a vehicle and sent out to meet film obsessives where they live.
Inside Wes Anderson’s Mobile Criterion Closet Visit
More moments from Anderson’s Hollywood Bowl stop inside Criterion’s traveling film archive.
Images: The Criterion Collection / Mobile Closet Picks
Anderson has been part of Criterion’s universe for years, so seeing him raid the shelves feels less like celebrity content and more like getting a peek at the cinematic family tree behind his own work. Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Sturges, Ford, Powell and Pressburger, Ray — then Flow casually sitting in there with them. Royal flair, indeed.
Watch Wes Anderson’s Criterion Mobile Closet Picks
Criterion recorded Anderson’s Closet Picks visit on July 11, 2026, during its Hollywood Bowl weekend celebrating the music and movies of Wes Anderson.
Source: The Criterion Collection.
