As DVDs have practically evolved into a separate art form, it made sense to look back on the year's top releases outside the context of film coverage. Below is a selection of our favorites.
Noel Murray:
1. Freaks & Geeks: The Complete Series (Shout Factory!)
This eight-disc set is packaged inside a lovingly assembled faux-yearbook and loaded with extras, setting a standard for fan-focused presentation that matches the series' achingly poignant, endlessly rewatchable quality. What's inside is equally amazing: the true hierarchy of high school, which has nothing to do with clique clashes and tail-chasing, but the division between the kids for whom high school is about grades and those for whom it's a mandatory social club. Ultimately, Freaks & Geeks is about how teenagers squeeze the most out of the minutes of personal freedom between classes, making the drudgery of public institutions bearable.
2. Shadows, Lies & Private Eyes: The Film Noir Collection (Warner Bros.)
The five films in the DVD set Shadows, Lies & Private Eyes: The Film Noir Collection deal indirectly with the guilt that runs beneath the American character, and the sense that someday someone might rightfully take away what we have. Freeze almost any shot of Murder My Sweet, Out Of The Past, Gun Crazy, The Set-Up or The Asphalt Jungle and the composition alone tells a story. The characters are pinned and writhing, dominated by extreme shadows and forced perspectives that have the quality of a nightmare.
3. The Martin Scorsese Collection (Warner Bros.)
Warner Home Video's six-disc, five-title Martin Scorsese Collection jumps from three of his earliest features (1967's Who's That Knocking At My Door, 1973's Mean Streets and 1974's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), to one from his mid-career "dark" period (1985's After Hours) and one from his renaissance (1990's Goodfellas), but the story the set tells about Scorsese's career is surprisingly coherent, marking his development as a director and his desire to blend the naturalism of Cassavetes with the expressionism of Ophuls.
4. More Treasures From The American Film Archives (Image)
Like its predecessor Treasures From American Film Archives, the new three-disc set pulls from scattered preservationist organizations, giving a representative sampling of the early serials, comedies, animated shorts, industrial films, melodramas and technical experiments that flourished in cinema's first three decades. The discs immerse the viewer in early film culture, when the medium's vocabulary was still being developed and the ongoing cineaste debates—art vs. storytelling, fantasy vs. social realism—were just getting warmed up.
5. The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (Criterion)
Fritz Lang's 1933 super-criminal thriller is sort of the Citizen Kane of film noir, both because of its stylistic innovations ("rhyming" compositions, jarring sound design, clever scene transitions) and because the movie defies conventional notions of good and evil. The DVD includes the shorter French version of the film (shot by Lang at the same time), as well as archival interviews with Lang and his crew, and a frank, insightful commentary by historian David Kalat, who's as much a fan of the rich Mabuse mythology as of Lang. The supplemental features build on Lang's theme of how evil ideas can survive their originator, corrupting those who consider them seriously.
6. Altman Altman Altman!
For years, Robert Altman has been underrepresented on home video, aside from major films like M♦A♦S♦H♦, Nashville and The Player. But earlier this year, Altman's work on the cult TV series Combat! received overdue preservation on two DVD sets, and both his surreal 1977 comedy 3 Women and his faltering 1985 Sam Shepard adaptation Fool For Love made the jump to DVD. By the end of 2004, three films that arguably belong in the all-time Altman Top 10 were made available: the free-ranging, sweet-and-sour 1974 gambling comedy California Split, the hazy 1984 Richard Nixon confessional Secret Honor and the 1993 Raymond Carver mosaic Short Cuts. And both Altman's prescient presidential campaign spoof Tanner '88 and its poignantly prosaic sequel Tanner On Tanner hit the racks as well. Even the director's relative failures remain singular and mesmerizing. Because of Altman's eye for the unusual, and his preference for location shooting, his five-decade body of work in TV and film makes a dynamic record of where people slept, ate, worked and talked.
7. Columbo: The Complete First Season (Universal)
Universal's DVD division kind of botched the fall release of the early Steven Spielberg efforts Duel and The Sugarland Express, which came out at the same time as Night Gallery: The Complete First Season and Columbo: The Complete First Season—two sets featuring work done under the then-20ish college dropout's seven-year contract with Universal Studios. The Duel bonus features gave a hint at what might've been, especially in its look at Spielberg's TV career, wherein he calls the Columbo episode "Murder By The Book" the "best script that anybody had ever given me." No such revelations appear on the Columbo set itself, which like Night Gallery and Sugarland, is devoid of any extras. (In fact, when I interviewed Peter Falk a month before the Columbo DVD release, he had no idea they were in the works.) Given the high quality of that first season of Columbo—and the seasons to come, where Falk's rumpled detective would continue to give '70s L.A. socialites a taste of working-class wit—it would be a shame if Universal's indifferent presentation prevented the kind of sales needed for future releases. (Ditto Columbia's shrug of a release for the superb first season of Barney Miller, another show that deserves to get a complete DVD run.)
8. Meet Me In St. Louis (Warner Bros.)
As far back as 1944, in the middle of World War II and the heart of the lighter, revue-musical era, director Vincente Minnelli delivered Meet Me In St. Louis, an ambitious nostalgia piece with a broad emotional palette. The film remains bright and funny, even while the frustration of children, powerless in a world made for adults, gives the movie a darker shade. The set's dirt streets and horse-drawn carriages add a little kink to what could pass for a '50s TV sitcom suburb, full of friendly neighbors and well-manicured lawns; and Minnelli frequently frames his characters through windows, which along with the shallow depth-of-field creates a diorama effect, boxing up the past like a Christmas window display. The Meet Me In St. Louis DVD includes a second disc with a storehouse of curios, the most remarkable being the smart 1972 documentary overview of MGM's history, Hollywood: The Dream Factory, and the dopey 1966 pilot for a proposed Meet Me In St. Louis TV series (closing the loop on the film's sitcom connection).
9. Seinfeld: Seasons 1 & 2 / Seinfeld: Season 3
It's not so much the episodes themselves that make these bestselling DVDs essential, especially since the shows run hot and cold until around the middle of the third season, when Jerry Seinfeld's and Larry David's sensibilities begin to merge into something more consistently brilliant. No, what's revolutionary and remarkable are the discs' "Inside Looks"—little interview compilations where nearly everyone involved tells funny and/or insightful stories about how each episode came to be. The "Inside Looks" pack all the information of a typical commentary track into about three to five minutes, with none of the hemming and hawing. The Simpsons team should take notes. (And speaking of masterful modern TV comedies like Seinfeld and The Simpsons, 2004 was also the year that saw the DVD releases of two new classics: the first season of Arrested Development and the complete run of the scathing and surprisingly sentimental The Office.)
10. Lola / Bay Of Angels (Wellspring)
These two early Jacques Demy wonders actually came out in December last year, where they sort of fell through the cracks of all the major holiday releases. Because so many Demy films are unavailable on video, his layers of swoony expressionism, banal naturalism and abstract autobiography has rarely been measured; but thanks to Lola and Bay Of Angels, it's easier to admire how Demy balanced the reckless exuberance of the New Wave with the classy polish of the "well-made film." Demy only made five features in the '60s, but he built an entire world of lonely lovers in waterside cities, missing connections and feeling each moment intensely. Lola's melancholy exotic dancer (played by Anouk Aimée) exists in a world of theatrical devices and ironic missed connections; while the addicted gambler/lovers in Bay Of Angels (played by Claude Mann and Jeanne Moreau) live a life of expensive booze and swanky nightclubs that only a rich man can afford, or that an obsessively detail-driven movie director can lovingly, heartbreakingly fake.
Jim Ridley:
1. The Alan Clarke Collection (Blue Underground)
Where home video all but killed revival theaters, DVD may be helping to revive them: new prints struck for DVD transfers are a moviegoer's boon, and the widescreen format has taught viewers about the damage done to classic films on TV and video. But for small-town kids with no access to an arthouse or museum, DVD serves as an ideal home-entertainment venue for revelatory retrospectives that rescue a worthy filmmaker from near-obscurity. With any justice, this five-disc set should make a household name of the late Alan Clarke, whose raw, dynamic 1980s work for British TV absolutely floored me. Anyone who worships at the altar of A Clockwork Orange or Fight Club should immediately seek out his Made in Britain (with Tim Roth electrifying as a raging skinhead) and The Firm (with Gary Oldman as a middle-class soccer hooligan), movies that combine an active, unsentimental social conscience with startling violence, hurtling movement and a documentarian's sense of place. But the revelation is Elephant, his cold-to-the-bone 1988 study of 18 sectarian murders in Northern Ireland. In 39 minutes, Clarke's prowling, merciless camera stalks a succession of anonymous citizens to their doom, offering neither explanation nor relent. It's like a nightmare loop on indefinite play, and once you realize that each stalk-shoot-kill vignette will play out exactly the same way, you feel sick whenever the next scene starts. Clarke's film inspired the Gus Van Sant school-shooting movie of the same name, but Van Sant didn't have the formal rigor or the nerve to maintain such an alienating conceit. Clarke does.
2. The Battle of Algiers (Criterion)
Be prepared to see the name "Criterion" on this list a lot: the company as usual set the bar for every other home-entertainment company with its meticulous editions of classic films. And none was more topical or relevant than Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 docudrama about Algeria's mid-'50s resistance to French rule, a movie so accurate in its depiction of urban warfare and terrorism that the Pentagon screened it before the Iraqi invasion. The best supplement of the three-disc set is Disc Three's series of documentaries and discussions on the conflict and the film's legacy, including a fascinating "case study" by former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke on what the Pentagon folks should have learned—and anticipated.
3. John Cassavetes: Five Films (Criterion)
Cassavetes stops being a name that cool people drop and becomes a subject of lifelong study in the films of this beautifully produced eight-disc set (which also includes Charles Kiselyak's sprawling documentary A Constant Forge). Movies like A Woman Under the Influence and the severely underrated The Killing of a Chinese Bookie aren't petrified classics: they're bristling, maddening, sometimes frustrating works that demand (and reward) a viewer's full attention. But where the hell is the legendary "first version" of his 1959 debut Shadows, recently discovered by Cassavetes scholar Ray Carney after considerable legwork? Not only isn't it here, Carney shamefully was all but erased from the set's official history—and since he's done the most penetrating study of the director over the years, his absence is felt almost as keenly as the movie's. To get the most from the set, read Carney's superb, painfully candid book Cassavetes on Cassavetes, where the director comes off much like his films—all the more compelling for his flaws.
4. The Ladies Man / The Jerry Lewis Collection (Paramount)
Har, har, har: "The French think Jerry Lewis is a genius." Guess what, wiseguys: the French are right. In these frequently astounding DVDs, watch Lewis as director mature into an honest-to-God cinematic innovator with a masterly command of screen space and timing, while Lewis the comic regresses almost to poo-flinging infancy. The line between brilliant and stupid has seldom been hopscotched as ably as in The Ladies' Man, a 1961 farce that the actor-director audaciously choreographed on an enormous three-story set. As Lewis's specially built camera crane swoops from floor to floor, Lewis the star staggers, stumbles, flails and mangles poor Buddy Lester's hat in some of the funniest sight gags ever conceived.
5. The Leopard (Criterion)
After hearing about the glories of Luchino Visconti's 1963 masterpiece, with Burt Lancaster's career-high performance as an aging nobleman in the twilight of the aristocracy, I broke down a few years back and bought a VHS bootleg. What a surprise to get Criterion's breathtaking three-disc set and find that the movie actually has color and sound, and that Visconti didn't intend for the image to warp like a sheet of plastic in a gale.
6. Street Mobster / Graveyard of Honor (Home Vision)
Okay, imagine you love gangster movies, and one day somebody tells you there's this movie you should watch called Goodfellas. These brutal 1970s yakuza epics from Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku should be next on your list. As cruel and coldly ironic as genre filmmaking gets, these thug-life allegories of Japan's post-bomb nihilism are unapologetically vicious and exciting as hell. Recommended strongly to Tarantino fans—like, run, this second.
7. The Rules of the Game / Stage and Spectacle: Three Films by Jean Renoir (Criterion)
The Rules of the Game you know—although Criterion's beautiful special edition is the first time I've ever seen it when it didn't look like the print was run through a cheese grater. The revelation to me was Renoir's 1955 Technicolor musical French Cancan, packaged as part of a joyous three-disc collection of the director's theater films (with The Golden Coach and Elena and Her Sisters). A vivacious comedy-drama about the launching of the Moulin Rouge, it starts as a trifle and ends as a transcendent celebration of the creator as compulsive impresario, beholden first and foremost to his art.
8. Deathdream (Blue Underground)
A good year for grindhouse fare was highlighted by this unheralded 1974 horror gem, a Vietnam-era variation on "The Monkey's Paw" that plays like the waking nightmare of every soldier's parent, then or now. A must-see. Also worth a look, for the strong of stomach and the sick at heart: Thriller: A Cruel Picture (Synapse), Lady Terminator (Mondo Macabro), Fight for Your Life (Blue Underground).
9. Fast Company (Blue Underground)
The obscure David Cronenberg race-car movie I'd wanted to see for 20 years, restored with a care that surprises even the director on his commentary track. Spring for the two-disc set, which offers an extra disc of early Cronenberg shorts. Kick ass, Blue Underground!
10. To Live and Die in L.A. (MGM)
DVDs of troubled productions almost never dish the dirt, especially on films which met with studio or star interference. Not so this edition of William Friedkin's whip-taut 1985 cop drama, which comes with one of the coolest extras I've ever seen. When studio chiefs demanded an ending that was less grim, Friedkin gave them a hilarious fuck-you of a compromise: a deliberately ludicrous "happy ending" worthy a laugh track. It's worth watching the intro just for the sneaky glee on Friedkin's face.
Jason Shawhan:
1. The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King: Extended Edition (New Line)
No surprises here. Excellence from start to finish.
2. Videodrome (The Criterion Collection)
The lovable freaks at Criterion understand the fetishized nature of DVD, putting as much into their releases as they can, and this comprehensive exploration of one of the most prescient and radical sci-fi films of the past several decades sits comfortably alongside their masterful Naked Lunch disc from last year. Finally, a DVD that watches and fetishizes you back... Here's hoping the rumors I hear about Criterion barreling into Crash on DVD sometime in the future turn out to be correct.
3. Spaced: Complete Collector's Edition (Region 2) (VCI-UK)/ Trouble Every Day (Winsong-Hong Kong)
Region-free is the way to be when it comes to DVD, as these sets prove. Spaced gathers every episode of the Britcom from the creators of Shaun of the Dead, and it makes an exquisite addition to any collection: smart and thoughtful extras, good transfers, and a great deal of love involved on all fronts. And since Claire Denis' vampire love story hasn't been issued stateside, the Trouble Every Day disc is a cheap necessity for connoisseurs of world cinema, easily imported from Asia for minimal cost and playable on any DVD player.
4. Maurice (Home Vision)
Merchant Ivory's deliriously romantic E.M. Forster adaptation comes to DVD in a lush two-disc set with heaps of extras and a great deal of historical significance. One of the finest gay films of all time, presented here perfectly with lots of extras.
5. Fat Girl (The Criterion Collection)
Score another triumph for Criterion.
6. Broken Lizard's Club Dread: Unrated Version (Fox)
"Unrated" DVDs are generally a crock. In the '80s unrated meant more sex and/or violence; now it's just some deleted material that gets slapped back in to generate another ancillary stream of cash for the studios. (Badder Santa, this means you.) This effort, however, restores some absolutely necessary subplots and fleshes out its characters in a much more satisfying way than the still-nice theatrical version. The Broken Lizard guys thrive on character interplay, so that would figure. Regardless, this is one of the few instances of a later "unrated" DVD release actually proving worth the consumer's time.
7. Wild at Heart (MGM)
When David Lynch takes the time to retransfer one of his films for DVD, it's always worth your attention. This is no exception. Simply the most beautiful this film has ever looked on home video.
8. Showgirls VIP Edition / Flesh + Blood (MGM)
More Verhoeven for your money. MGM has given a gift to the cineastes of the world, offering both the properly anamorphic Showgirls with its embarrassment-of-excesses VIP Edition as well as a streamlined but beautifully uncut edition of Flesh + Blood, his Crusades epic with Jennifer Jason Leigh. The Flesh + Blood disc has a great Verhoeven commentary (no surprise there), but the Showgirls disc is strangely missing any of his participation. Still, it is the ultimate in flashy extravagance when it comes to DVD packaging.
9. Candyman Special Edition (Columbia TriStar)
Finally, some real love is shown to the '90s' only new slasher franchise of note. Lots of extras and delicious tidbits.
10. Hard to Die (New Concorde) / Hi, Mom! (MGM) / Songwriter (Columbia TriStar)
Nothing extra or special on these discs, but it's an unbelievable relief to have them on disc all the same. Brian De Palma's anarchic early comedy Hi, Mom! in particular feels like one of Donnie Darko's extradimensional artifacts, and its explosive mix of humor, avant-garde theatre, and terrorism is just as potent 34 years later. Hard to Die is one of the finest T&A action films ever, presented here in a cut two minutes longer than the most extant unrated one. And Songwriter—well, it's simply an American classic.
10. Hard to Die (New Concorde) / Hi, Mom! (MGM) / Songwriter (Columbia TriStar)
Nothing extra or special on these discs, but it's an unbelievable relief to have them on disc all the same. Brian De Palma's anarchic early comedy Hi, Mom! in particular feels like one of Donnie Darko's extradimensional artifacts, and its explosive mix of humor, avant-garde theatre, and terrorism is just as potent 34 years later. Hard to Die is one of the finest T&A action films ever, presented here in a cut two minutes longer than the most extant unrated one. And Songwriter—well, it's simply an American classic.
