Best DVDs of 2009, Part One: Blu-ray discs

2009 was a pretty lousy year in many respects, I found. One respect in which it was distinctly not lousy was DVDs. A lot of great stuff, to the extent that I'm gonna need two posts to cite them all. And you may find I've missed a favorite or two of yours. First, the still-contention-fomenting Blu-ray Disc format. A lot of the below titles were released on standard-def DVD concurrently, but not all of them; in any case, the Blu-rays of the films that got dual-format releases are my preferred versions. So. In alphabetical order...

DOMESTIC ISSUES

An American Werewolf In London (Universal) Sadly, I've never quite been able to figure out whether I dig this grisly/funny John Landis concoction in spite of its meretriciousness or precisely because of it. In any event, this rendering of it preserves its excesses very nicely.

Bird With The Crystal Plumage (Blue Underground) Not my fave Argento by a longshot...but because the Blue Underground folks are not beholden to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and his Esperanto-for-TV-displays 2.0 aspect ratio scheme, we now get a Storaro-shot widescreen Blu-ray in its original 2.35 ratio. 

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Criterion) Yes, I know I wasn't too crazy about this film, and remain so. Still, this disc is a keeper because of its spectacular picture quality and exhaustive extras, which may someday persuade me to upgrade my assessment of it. Criterion's decision to handle this film is one of several silly complaints voiced in a recent Newsweek article by Daniel D'Addario, who sniffs, "turns out the art of the deal plays a bigger role in the Criterion process than you'd think," after quoting Criterion president Peter Becker saying that the Button disc was a kind of favor to David Fincher. Oh, somebody guide me to the fainting couch—Criterion admits it wants to work with David Fincher. Well, gee, who doesn't want to work with David Fincher at some level. Hell, I'd like to work with David Fincher. But to D'Addario, this constitutes some kind of sin, as does Criterion's recent deal with IFC, which has thus far yielded spectacular Blu-ray editions of Gomorrah, Che, and A Christmas Tale. These pictures are "decent enough," allows D'Addario, "[b]ut classics?" Maybe, maybe not, but hey, let's look at the mission statement that's on every Criterion Collection case: "The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films..." Aha! There goes D'Addario's whole thesis, I guess. Maybe the question should have been "But important?" Of course that's a more...mercurial quality, I suppose. I for one welcome the Criterion/IFC deal. IFC's acquisition guy has great taste and he snatches up a lot of fantastic stuff very fast. (Last time I was at Cannes, whenever I'd see a picture I thought was particularly fantastic, I'd call a friend who runs a DVD label and say, "Go after this," and he'd say, "IFC just bought it.) But IFC's current distribution model, which ought to gain traction in the coming months/years, often means that what the company acquires gets a limited theatrical exposure. The Criterion deal gets this stuff out there more prominently, which I consider a good thing. And in any event, as I've said before, Criterion isn't a non-profit. And D'Addario's arguments would have a little (a very little) more credibility if he himself didn't come off like he couldn't tell Two Or Three Things I Know About Her from Ten Things I Hate About You without a Google search.

Dead and Buried (Blue Underground) Gary Sherman's near-classic '81 living dead film, one-stop shopping for exploitation kicks (gratuitous nudity, nasty shocks), but also genuinely spooky in an old-school vein. 

Dr. Strangelove (Sony, pictured) I saw a new 35mm print of this a week or so before I got the Blu-ray, so I felt particularly secure in sizing this one up. Just fabulous. A lot of grain? Yes, in all the right places. I took issue with grain-allergic Jeffrey Wells here. 

Drag Me To Hell (Universal) Vivid horror cartoon fun!

Easy Rider (Warner) I've always considered the film something of a meander, but seeing it like this—Lazslo Kovacs' groundbreaking, impressionistic, semi-doc-style cinematography reproduced with exquisite sensitivity—actually improved its dramatic component for me. Said component is, as Paul Schrader noted, quite conventional and sentimental. Still, it's more than just a time-capsule piece.

Fight Club (Fox) The very dark comedy's darks are very rich here.

The 400 Blows (Criterion) Every frame an honest beauty.

The General (Kino) Remastered from a fine-grain print taken from the original negative, this is a smooth-as-silk sepia experience of an immortal masterpiece. The great Dave Kehr uses the disc as a springboard for his pertinent musings on Blu-ray and classic cinema here. 

Gimme Shelter (Criterion): I wish I still had that old issue of Video Review wherein D.A. Pennebaker raves about the image quality of 8mm film projected onto a white sheet, so I could get the exact quote. In any event, if you're at all in sync with Pennebaker's sentiment—that the format had a unique vivid beauty—you'll understand the logic, no, the genius, of giving this rough-and-ready 16mm-shot doc the Blu-ray treatment. There's blur, there's grain, there's flaring; and it's all beautiful. The movie, of course, is one half great concert film and oher half counterculture nightmare.

Gone With The Wind (Warner) Speaking of sepia; the beautiful tinge of it injected into the film's Technicolor in its first half is given its propers in this dazzling rendition of a magnificent and problematic picture.

Hot Fuzz (Universal): Very slick and sleek, befitting its brand of smart and technologically advanced comedy.

Howards End (Criterion) The Merchant/Ivory tradition of quality, here represented in its arguably most successful manifestation, and given a meticulous presentation.

Inglourious Basterds (Universal) That it should yield a great Blu-ray isn't necessarily news. 

Kagemusha (Criterion) Jaw-dropping color. No, really, your jaw will drop.

Labyrinth (Sony) Scary muppets and...super creep? Oh, Bowie's character isn't that bad.

Last Year At Marienbad (Criterion) Not a puzzle film, but rather a work of science fiction. Images smooth as satin. And still capable of generating controversy after fifty some odd years. 

The Last Metro (Criterion) A particularly gorgeous Truffaut/Almendros collab. Some notes here. 

Monsters Inc. (Disney) Already-classic Pixar.

Monterey Pop (Criterion) Pennebaker himself. See entry for Gimme Shelter.

The New World (New Line) The extended cut, 175 often breathtakingly beautiful minutes. One wishes someone would give the film a treatment akin to the multi-version presentation of Mr. Arkadin that Criterion did some years back. 

North By Northwest (Warner) Part of a Warner Blu-ray trifecta along with GWTW and Oz. Probably my favorite film of the three. 

Pierrot Le Fou (Criterion) Godard at his most color-drunk since Contempt.

Pinocchio (Disney) One of those "holy moley" home theater experiences. Pictured, and reviewed here.

 

Playtime (Criterion) If it's gonna be watched at home, it's gotta be watched in this version. Period. Here's why.

Repulsion (Criterion) Polanski's great all-men-are-creeps goosebump fest. Look at the detail on that rabbit!

The Seventh Seal (Criterion) Something I really never thought I'd see when the format debuted. Hence, the stuff that dreams are made of, in certain respects.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney) The multi-plane camera 3-D effect on this is actually better than several "real" 3-D films I saw over the past few years. And the rest of it's great too. 

South Pacific (Fox) More Todd-AO on Blu-ray, please? 

Synecdoche NY (Sony) Not just because I'm one of its voluminous DVD extras. Really. 

Raging Bull (MGM) A superbly satisfying rendition.

Up (Disney) Again, not news.

Vanishing Point (Fox) Existentialism and fast cars, a minor cult classic with some substantial visual pleasures.

The Wages of Fear (Criterion) Desperate characters and nerve-wracking suspense in pitiless black and white...

Wings of Desire (Criterion) Considered here. 

The Wizard of Oz (Warner) Definitively dazzling.

UPDATE: A reader reminds me that the Zodiac director's cut Blu-ray was a January '09 release. Fits in nicely here; good thing its title begins with a Z...

FURTHER UPDATE: Having gotten a Japanese issue of the amazing Warner disc of An American In Paris previously, I stupidly forgot its domestic release in '09. Of course it's a must, as is the Blu-ray of Gigi. I also neglected to mention the icons of religious and Technicolor kitsch Quo Vadis and The Robe. And the icon of just plain kitsch The Towering Inferno. All dazzling Blus!

 

FOREIGN ISSUES

Belle De Jour (Studio Canal Collection, Region B locked) This Studio Canal collection is putting some pretty exciting stuff on Blu-ray, and doing it well. It's likely that this title, and the Godard cited below, will see domestic release via Liongsate, and if they don't screw them up, that'll be great. Me, I couldn't wait...

BFI Flipside label (Region B locked): Hard to pick just one title from this intriguing offshoot of this splendid label, which has been responsible for magnificent Blu-rays of Antonioni's The Red Desert and Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life." I've reviewed Primitive London and Herostratus here and here. And then there's Lester's The Bed-Sitting Room. And the three Jane Arden/Jack Bond films, which are impressive and haunting and have been, for me, impossible to write about. An eccentric treasure trove.

Contempt (Studio Canal Collection, Region-free) Ooh, look how heavenly white Michel Piccoli's cigarette is...

The Dam Busters (Optimum, Region B locked) This favorite of WWII-movie connoisseurs really shines in this Blu-ray. A nice surprise.

Hamlet (ITV, Region B locked) A Facebook friend, citing this and Welles' Macbeth, called 1948 "the year Shakespeare went noir." This disc is an immersion in fog-choked melancholic atmosphere.

Red Cliff I and II (Mei Ah Entertainment, Region A) If you can't see the full five-hour-plus version of this magnificent Woo epic on a very big screen, these two excellent discs are the next best thing.

Sunrise (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema, Region-free) An inspired and inspiring disc. Reviewed here.

Tokyo Sonata (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema, Region-free) The Mad Detective Blu-ray isn't anything to sneeze at, either. The label's going to be even more aggressive with Blu-ray this year, which we should all be looking forward to.  

 

Comments

[bill]

That PINNOCHIO still is amazing. I don't have a Blu-Ray player yet myself, so I'm very much looking forward to part 2 of this, to see if there are any big DVDs I missed. More than likely there are. I loved when you did this feature at PREMIERE, and I do believe that's how I found out about the Val Lewton set, for which I'm eternally grateful.

[Michael Adams]

Glad to see Hot Fuzz on your list. So much is going on that wonderful new jokes jump out every time I see it. It doesn't seem to be the kind of film, compared to New World, say, that cries out to be Blu, but it does look much better than it did in theaters.

The Blu revelation of 2009 for me is North by Northwest. I'd seen it at least twenty times but never noticed ROT's yellow undies until this time, and EMS is much more attractive than before. Blu makes a great film even greater.

[Tom Russell]

I too found that "article" about Criterion rather stupid, especially given the whole "contemporary" part of the mission statement, as you cited. And I'm the guy who picked a snit about ARMAGEDDON's presence in its catalogue and, IIRC, inspired a recent "Criterion isn't a non-profit" response.

I kinda wish Criterion had access/DVD rights to the films that were in their laserdisc collection, which was a bit more eclectic (Ghostbusters! Spinal Tap! Boogie Nights!), and helped in some ways to broaden the Strictly Arthouse image that D'Addario thinks they're squandering.

[Fabian W.]

What, no ZODIAC Director's Cut Blu-Ray? That was in January, right?

[James Keepnews]

Couple o' things:

* "the still-contention-fomenting Blu-ray Disc format" -- for realz?? Some people would still prefer Betamax? Seriously, I thought this was the long-preferred DVD format for the cinephile, even as against HD-DVD. Who is doing the contending, and why?

* You are too kind by half to Mr. D'Addario, and deserve to give him the full Glenn on The Auteurs, elsewhere. I realize Newsweek is viewed across a broad swath of world history as an unassailable pinnacle of indie/arthouse cred. And yet. To paraphrase a Bryon Coley review from many years ago, please fuck him.

* You've been name-checking Dead and Buried more than once of late, and it interested me since Mr. Sherman (whose memorable, underrated Vice Squad is the only thing I've seen by him) has pretty much written it off, even more than his hacked-up Death Line/Raw Meat -- in his Shock Cinema interview he refused to discuss it at all. Discuss...

* Never, ever understood the Vanishing Point cult, except in principle (speed freak, long drive, chases, hip black DJ/Tiresias stand-in, etc.) In practice, however, I found it so goofy and unbelievable -- where to begin? Tiresias/Little declaiming on Newman's "crazy luck", about which he became informed....how? I'll sit through Jeanne Dielmann or Wavelength again, though I know how both will end, before I will for Vanishing Point. I'd sooner die -- is that what people mean when they call the film "existential"?

* And to close out by potentially further stoking cinephilic wrath: is now a good time to admit I prefer Sorcerer over Wages of Fear? No? too late...

[Tom Russell]

But... but... WAGES OF FEAR is good. It's moody, taut, incredibly visceral, not to mention delightfully sordid. It takes the time to set up its mileau and the stakes, which to my mind makes the action sequences all the more satisfying and thrilling.

SORCERER, on the other hand-- all it really has going for it, I think, is the score by Tangerine Dream. Which is (in all seriousness) nothing to sniff at, I think it's an absolutely lovely score, certainly evocative, but the film as a whole I find to be quite underwhelming. (Though this might be my well-documented anti-Friedkin bias speaking.)

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, James, and I'm certainly not trying to unleash cinephilic wrath upon your person-- I'm just curious what qualities SORCERER has that puts it over WAGES OF FEAR in your book.

As for Vanishing Point, I thought it was pretty neat but wasn't as wowed by it as I thought I'd be, given the hype. My wife introduced me to it and seemed to get a lot bigger kick out of it than I did. She also had seen it when it came out in theaters, and was probably better able to get back in touch with the film's original "zeitgeist" than I; a lot that might seem silly or curious in my child-of-the-eighties-and-nineties eyes are forgiven/understood by her eyes (just as my affection for the Transformers or Thundercats cartoons seem rather alien to her).

Granted, I have no idea how old you are, Mr. Keepnews, and this explanation could for you personally not hold very much water. But that was my experience with it, at any rate.

[bill]

I don't agree with James Keepnews about many things, but SORCERER vs. WAGES OF FEAR is one of them. Granted, it's been ages since I've seen either one, but the sweaty tension everyone says they feel when watching WAGES OF FEAR is how I felt watch SORCERER, and SORCERER doesn't have its protagonist celebrate his survival and new solvency by weaving across the road like a cartoon drunk, so that fate can kill him.

[Tom Russell]

I'll agree that the ending of WAGES, while in keeping with the film's cynical nature, is a little much.

[Dan]

You know, I can't stand "Fight Club" as a movie, but I'm forced to agree it belongs on this list just for technical reasons. Great transfer.

[Chris O.]

Glenn, did you agree with Wells' assessment/near-heart attack re: "The French Connection?" It's not on your list and I've avoided picking it up as well.

[Brian]

Wow, how horrible that Criterion offers presumably more commercial films like BUTTON as a way of funding presumably less commercial films like 2 OR 3 THINGS! Why, that would put them in the same category as all the other studios and companies that successfully balanced art and commerce! I have no real interest in BUTTON, but if it means I get to finally see MADE IN USA, or THAT HAMILTON WOMAN, or the wonderful Eclipse packages of the last few years, what's the real problem here? Someone should get D'Addario off the commune and put a copy of Thomas Schatz's THE GENIUS OF THE SYSTEM into his hands.

[christian]

I think what's neat about VANISHING POINT, silly as it is, is the network of counter-culture types who help Kowalski on his existential road journey. It gives it a definite cultural moment. And the cars are bad-ass.

[david hare]

Glenn, no love for the ITV Red Shoes (region B locked)? Or are you holding out for the inevitable Criterion second half of this year? It topped my list of Blus for the Beaver - inna hell of a strong field.

Watching Marienbad again in the Criterion Blu (the Canal is virtually identical in quality) it finally dawned on me this is the first of Resnais' Musical Comedies. Francis Seyrig's (Delphine's bro) humongous, Desormiere-esque organ score is the key, along with the name of the play and author they're all watching.

[James Keepnews]

James does not consider Wages bad, just that Sorcerer's better. What puts it over? I saw Wages after Sorcerer and was surprised to believe the homage exceeded the original. I realize it was the 50's but for so grimy and "existential" a journey in Wages, it felt contrived and maybe not all that grimy compared to the journeys realized in Sorcerer (if only Sam Fuller had directed it!). Make no mistake, Friedkin is way, way over the top with some of the material -- guilty Irish goons hitting a Catholic Church during a wedding where the bride has a fresh black eye, mmm, subtle, and that's just Roy's path in. The "removal" of the tree in the jungle path is perhaps the most riveting sequence in all of Friedkin's films. And the bottomless cynicism throughout plus the no exit coda, matching many no exits leading up to it. For me, Wages pales by comparison, where Sorcerer is a key 70's film for me, if for few else.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ David Hare: Yes, I was very high on the ITV "Shoes," but as the Criterion version is a certainty I held out; many readers accuse me of trying to bust their bank accounts so I thought I'd show some mercy. It is spectacular but I have no reason to think the Criterion won't be just as good!

That's an interesting perspective on "Marienbad," I'll have to try looking at it that way soon!

@ James, I'm not sure about "Sorcerer"'s superiority, but I know damn well I'd like to see it again, sooner than later.

[James Keepnews]

Glenn -- Me, too! If I'm not mistaken, the primary reason there hasn't been a major Sorcerer video release is because of how utterly pissed off the studio is at Friedkin, still! Certainly, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls details Billy's divadom in the jungle during the making of Sorcerer pretty thoroughly, though 25 years is quite a long time to hold a grudge, no matter how poorly it did at the box office nor the auteur's manners and/or absence thereof. You'd think Mrs. Friedkin might be able to twist an arm or three, though that may be a related problem...

[Chris O.]

Finally had time to find your comments re: "The French Connection." Consensus is clear across the board. Will avoid.