Notorious Film Nerd Hideo Kojima Reveals His Criterion Collection Picks

ign.com:

Hideo Kojima isn't shy about his love for movies. The creator behind games like Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding even wanted to make movies before becoming a game developer, and his games often pay homage to some of his favorites. Even Snake, the main character of the Metal Gear Franchise, is named after Escape from New York's protagonist, Snake Plissken. He famously goes out of his way to inject cinematic sensibilities into his works and loves working with big-name actors. The man just loves movies.

Criterion, the organization behind the Criterion Collection, invited Hideo Kojima to do a video in its 'Closet Picks' series on its YouTube channel. The series is dedicated to highlighting notable voices in creative industries where a selected luminary picks their favorites from the "Criterion Closet," which is exactly what it sounds like; a closet containing physical copies of each film in the Criterion Collection.

In the video, Kojima looks like a kid in a candy store. "It's like being in heaven," he says, before bemoaning the lack of movies from the '50s and '60s on streaming services. He goes on to discuss how he usually buys physical copies of his favorites from that time through Criterion because it's the only place he can find physical prints of some of his favorite classics.

Here are Kojima's picks:

Before picking High and Low (1963), Kojima introduced this police procedural-meets-domestic-drama as his favorite among director Akira Kurosawa's other, more popular works like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. The Death Stranding director said, "I love High and Low the most. I was so shocked when I saw this, so I'd love for you to watch it."

"Now, where there's Akira Kurosawa, there's Yasujiro Ozu." Kojima introduced Yasujiro