It was especially tough
to come around to work on this list in 2020, given my annoying health
conditions (not anything life-threatening, but this whooping cough or whatever
has now stayed with me for nearly a month and shows no sign of leaving), and
concentration of so many stressful personal matters— including death of a
family member— in the months of November and December pushed everything into
the already hectic month of January 2020, jam-packed with teaching and book-writing
schedules. In any case, I was absolutely
convinced that I would not be able to upload My Favorite Blu Ray list for the
year 2019. Well, what can I say, if you
are reading this, I have somehow managed to complete it again this year. I am certifiably
insane, is all I (or my wife) can say. Considering that I uploaded the My
Favorite DVD list of 2008 in December 28 of that year, you can see how
at-the-very-last-moment ritual it has become for me. Well, maybe one day I might entirely give up
on it. But we have not yet reached that
year, it seems.
Despite some personal
setbacks and sorrowful events, 2019 was again a too-good-to-be-true year for a
Blu Ray collector of classic cinema. It
also marked the year wherein I finally took care of one of my gotta-do agendas
for the last half-decade, that is, purchasing a sixty-five-inch 4K Ultra HD
OLED TV, with its 1.5 millimeter-thick screen to match the superb Home Theater
setup in our living room. We did get
hold of an LG 4K Ultra HD Blu Ray player as well, but the enhanced format would
not receive much attention until when I have thoroughly, exhaustively extracted
the maximum pleasure out of sampling my existing Blu Ray collections, from the
austere, magnificent black and white cinematography of Kobayashi Masaki’s Harakiri/Seppuku, to the kind of
brilliant hues and depths of image never before enjoyed by the TV viewers now
available due to HD restorations of classic TV shows such as UFO and The Persuaders, to the dodgy animation effects and grain-covered
less-than-pristine looks of ‘80s horror opuses such as Hellraiser and its sequels.
Not surprisingly, having this greatly enhanced venue for viewing the new
2K & 4K HD transfers as well as meticulous restorations executed by valiant
physical media companies only double and triple my appreciations of what they
have done.
I should note here,
though, that apparently for this TV the god-awful “True Motion” or whatever it
is that they call it these days, which messes with the 24 frames-per-second
rate of a motion picture so that it would look like a badly captured wedding
video, was the default setup. I had to go into every (there was at least a
dozen) picture mode and disable it one by one, except maybe for the “Sports
Replay” mode. It irks me to think that
someone somewhere might be watching, say, North by Northwest or the
original Star Wars in this cheapjack video-motion mode and think this is
the “right” way to watch these classic films. Are any of you committing this
kind of unpardonable sin by any chance? I couldn’t care less about in what mode
you watch latest Marvel movies, but please, please do yourself a favor and turn
off these fancy-schmantzy “video enhancement” functions while watching classic cinema.
I think I have made it
clear some time ago that I do not pay attention anymore to the industry
“prognosis” about “death” of the physical media. What this prognosis really means is that the
market size of the physical media is shrinking as that of the streaming giants
is increasing, which we have known for the last twenty years. Big Yeti-hairy
deal. After all, why do you think the
label Twilight Time chose to call themselves Twilight Time? But I am increasingly convinced that, no
matter how dominant the streaming service gets, there will always remain a
rather significant section of the market reserved for the physical media. I had once thought that they would go the way of VHS tapes or LP records, provided what Korean kids have been doing
for the last decade (and presumably Sinophone kids will be doing in the
future), i.e. giving the right for the viewers to “own” a movie at seven
dollars per pop became a global practice. But I honestly do not see
Disney or Netflix turning this kind of practice into a global norm anytime soon. Beside, Netflix has apparently decided that,
without joining the boutique physical media market, they will never have the
kind of respectability that old studios, say, Warner Brothers, still command,
and reached out to Criterion Collection to release some
of their choice items, Roma, The Irishman, Atlantics, Marriage
Story and American Factory in 2020 (Remember my citation of this Collider piece last year about why Netflix had not
really “made” it unless they released their more prestigious products through Blu Rays and DVDs?).
So, we do not know if
American democracy as we know could survive this year, or if North Korea could
still remain intact as a belligerent quasi-monarchy by the end of this year,
but one thing is certain: barring a global nuclear war or a massive scale alien
“cleansing” of the earth’s most destructive parasitic organisms, i.e. humans, I
would have collected dozens or more of highly desirable Blu Ray discs (this
time, hopefully, a few 4K UHD ones as well).
Now, another list like this for 2020 is definitely not guaranteed. Yet, its possible failure to materialize would
have little to do with the unavailability of desirable or precious items, and
would be all about my health, stress level or top-priority preoccupations at the
year’s end.
So much for the talk
about the (uncertain) future! As is the case with every year, I would like to
reiterate that this list is not a compendium of the greatest or even
historically most meaningful Blu Ray releases in 2019, nor is it an assessment
of best restorations or the most high-quality presentations of particular
motion pictures: it is a highly personal, eclectic and eccentric report of the
discs that I had purchased within the last year, with the operating keywords
being “(re) discovery” and “emotional responses.” Last year, I had spent such an agonizing time
deciding the items between the ranks of twenty and thirty or so that I ended up
inflating the number of the chosen ones to twenty-five. This year, I am back to twenty (Thank
God). However, as my bilingual readers
might have noticed, the selections do not exactly replicate the Korean-language
version uploaded here. It has occurred to me that I could easily
have drawn up entirely different lists of fifteen Blu Rays for Korean- and
English-language, but as you might have guessed, had I committed to that project,
I would still be writing them during the Easter.
So without further ado,
let’s dive into the list! A note to those not familiar with Blu Rays: Region
“A” discs are playable without modification in North America, Japan and South
Korea, whereas Region “B” discs are playable only in Europe. I don’t know if
Brexit is going to have any effect on this? Sorry, that was sarcasm.
20. La Prisonniére (1968, Region A, Studio
Canal-Kino Classics)
One of the most visually
stunning releases of classical cinema in 2019, this last film directed by
Henri-Georges Clouzot might not sit well with a large chunk of contemporary
critics and viewers, especially regarding what some of them might consider to be the
great filmmaker’s retrograde view of his female protagonist,
José, luminously embodied by Elisabeth Weiner.
She is a TV program editor in a rather European-style “open” marriage to
sculptor Gilbert (Bernard Fresson), drawn to a sexual game of domination and
humiliation practiced by their mutual friend, art gallery owner Stanislav
(Laurent Terzieff). What ensues is, depending on your critical stance, either a
super-cynical critique of the “revolutionary spirit” of
’68, especially its credo of emancipation through uninhibited celebration of
sexuality, or a modern-day examination of the death of romance, as clinically
disturbing in its honest exploration of the manipulation and distortion of
emotional exchange in so-called “falling in love” situations. Either way you cut it, La Prisonniére
is not an easy film to like, or defend politically.
Kino Lorber’s amazing
presentation of this tough and disturbing yet fantastically beautiful film,
based on the 4K restoration of original elements by Studio Canal, goes a long
way to entice new viewers to resist pat denunciations of the film. Lending them helping hands is the wonderful
Kat Ellinger, who in a thorough and enthusiastic commentary makes the case for
Clouzot’s final opus as a severely misunderstood and underappreciated
masterpiece. Also included is a delightful interview of the still-luminous
Elisabeth Wiener.
19. ffolkes (a.k.a. North Sea Hijack) (1980,
Region A, Kino Lorber)
One of those mid-level
genre films that you fondly remember from cable TV broadcasts or chance
encounters as VHS tapes, the ridiculously titled ffolkes (not that North
Sea Hijack is any better, to be truthful) was, as commentators Howard S.
Berger, Steve Mitchell and Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson point out, made
at the tail end of a British sub-genre of “marine techno-thrillers” specialized
by the likes of Alistair McLean. Directed by the old Western hand and John
Wayne associate Andrew V. McLagren, ffolkes ought be as stale as a piece
of leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Instead, it turns out to be a charming and
brisk action thriller that never overstays its welcome, and somehow navigates
like a slippery eel through potential pitfalls, such as characterization of the
protagonist Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (he insists on writing the last name all in
small letters) as a blatant misogynist who loves cats instead of women.
Honestly, it would be
dishonest for me to pretend that a film in which the sweaty Anthony Perkins
looks the bearded Roger Moore directly in the eyes and intones, “I still don’t
like your face,” would not hold a special place in my collection. And it comes
in a Blu Ray presentation that has no right to be as bright and clear as the
Antarctic ocean gleaming in the pale sunlight.
18. The Colossus of New
York (1958, Region B, 101 Films)
Another minor classic
that, far more than many other A-list SF films, had haunted my childhood
memories, The Colossus of New York is a rather cheap production that employs
a distinctive minimalist outlook, supervised by director Eugene Lourié, but
with an indelible monster-hero who is also one of the cinema’s first fully realized
cyborgs, a Golem-like hulking humanoid into which a genius scientist’s brain is
deposited. This film was released as a
no-frills Blu Ray from Olive Films stateside in 2012, but for some reason I have
missed out on it.
I finally got a chance to
watch it via my OLED TV through the Region B 101 Film’s release, so perhaps the
wait was worth it. Watching the film anew certainly confirmed its ahead-of-its-time prescience in relation to its serious
exploration of such heady issues as merging of machines (“automations” as the film
calls them) and human organisms, global environmental problems and ethics of extending one's life against his or her wishes. Indeed, the protagonist’s father, Dr. William
Spensser (Otto Kruger), comes off as a true villain of the piece, treating his
son not as a human being but as a resource to be exploited for the benefit of
the mankind. The startlingly surrealistic climax, in which the Colossus attacks
a convention of scientists and journalists gathered at what appears to be a
child’s nightmare version of the United Nations building, preserves the weird but effectively allegorical character of what could have been just another ‘50s
killer-robot-on-rampage potboiler.
The 101 Film release, in
addition to its excellent transfer, comes with a droll but informative
commentary by film historians Allan Bryce and Richard Holliss (a team who had previously
recorded another spiffy commentary for the company’s Crack in the World
Blu Ray).
17. Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978,
Region Free, Mondo Macabro)
Here’s one desperately
wishing for a collective release of all of Kim Ki-young’s available filmography
in Blu Ray! Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death, better known in an
abridged title, Killer Butterfly, is one of the craziest, most hilarious
and simultaneously most unsettling films made by the mad genius Kim, whose
cinematic universe is a perverse fantasy fairyland in which arch,
existentialist observations and stark-raving-lunatic Freudian fetishes are
deliriously blended with cheapskate special effects and hallucinatory visuals.
Mondo Macabro has come up
with a new 4K transfer from (admittedly pretty beat-up) negative, presenting
this rarely screened film in its best behavior, and fills up the supplements
with such enlightening materials as interviews with the still-gorgeous actress
Lee Hwa-si (utterly unforgettable from Kim’s sui generis masterpiece Ieodo),
producer Jeong Jin-woo (a prolific director of his own, Does Cuckoo Cry at
Night?, Janyeomok) and Our Intrepid Editor Darcy Paquet, among others. A perhaps-too-strong pill of antidote for
those who immediately think of “Buddhist temples” or, more specifically, Kim
Ki-duk painting Buddhist sutras with a cat’s tail when “classic Korean cinema”
is mentioned.
16. Of Flesh and Blood:
The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda (1995-2008, Region B, The British Film
Institute)
Even though I was moved
to tears after watching The Third Murder and The Shoplifters and
recognize him as one of the greatest living Japanese filmmakers, somehow
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s works have never won me over completely. All the same, watching these two most recent
films by the master prompted me to look for a Blu Ray copy of Nobody Knows
and Still Walking. Sure enough, as if they had telepathically responded
to my request, the British Film Institute conflated these two gut-wrenching
gems with two of Kore-eda’s earliest hits, After Life and Maborosi
into a beautiful boxset.
It is truly worth the
price of this boxset to be able to appreciate the supplements that carefully
balance production histories, academic analysis and testimonies by the
participants of Kore-eda’s cinematic projects. As an icing on the cake, the set
comes with a 72-page companion pamphlet that really cannot be properly called a
“booklet.”
15. Fantomas: Three Film
Collection (1964-1967, Region A, Gaumont-Kino Lorber)
Kino Lorber surprised us
in 2017 by releasing a five-film collection of the French-language OSS 117
series that have been commonly thought as Gallic knockoffs of James Bond, but
seen in the eye-opening gorgeous HD transfers, proved themselves to be fascinating
entertainments on their own and not pale imitations of the British agent's antics. This year
Gaumont and Kino Lorber turn their attention to the 1960s adaptations of the
venerable super-villain Fantomas directed by the redoubtable Andre Hunebelle.
The motion pictures in
question are more of physical comedies than crime thrillers, donating much time
to sometimes-exasperating antics of Louis de Funes as Police Commissioner Juve,
but they do come with the superbly charismatic Jean Marais, a onetime partner
of Jean Cocteau, as both Fantomas and his journalist nemesis Fandor, whose
eye-popping action stunts (at one point in full view climbing into a flying
helicopter!) and larger-than-life yet utterly charming expressions recall classic Hollywood stars such as Kirk Douglas.
Not earth-shaking masterpieces of cinematic arts, the Fantomas trilogy
(whose name, by the way, is apparently pronounced “Fantoma-S,” not “Fang-to-ma”
as I have always thought) are nonetheless a thorough delight.
14. Slaughterhouse Five
(1972, Region A, Arrow Video)
There was a time when I
thought that George Roy Hill was one of the greatest American directors of all
time. Not that I have come now to depreciate his works in comparison to the
more critically celebrated American (or European) films of his generation, but
for all my adulation of his filmmaking craft and commitment to
characterization, Hill’s filmography is not as well represented in my
collection, compared to, say, Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, or even John
Schlesinger. Taking a big step toward
amending this situation is Arrow’s release of this adaptation of the allegedly
unfilmable Kurt Vonnegut novel, remastered with the new 4K transfer of the original
negative. Slaughterhouse Five, basically
a powerful Viet Nam era slice of Americana, captures the mordant black humor,
existentialist despair and flights of fancy in the allegorical mode of
science fiction present in the Vonnegut novel and visualizes all these elements
into a series of vignettes both achingly personal and grandiose, all backed up
by elegant, non-bombastic (see the sentence below) classical tunes judiciously
selected and arranged by Glenn Gould.
It is an astonishingly
faithful adaptation of Vonnegut, handled with exquisite care by one of the top
labels operating in the Blu Ray market today. If you are looking for a famous
SF film that trashes the agendas of the celebrated original novel, go watch 2001:
A Space Odyssey.
13. Viy (1967, Region
Free, Severin Films)
Based on Nikolai Gogol’s
short story, Viy is one of those films that genuinely replicate the
mysterious qualities of a childhood fairy tale that also contain truly
frightening and nightmarish elements, largely inaccessible to the adults after they have grown up. Only classic Disney
films, with their mind-shatteringly scary sequences suddenly intruding into the
consciousness of helpless children while watching such supposedly innocuous titles as The
Snow White and Fantasia, seem to be able to match these qualities
present in abundance in this Russian piece of phantasmagoria.
A big, pleasant surprise
is that Severin Films took it upon themselves to release the remastered
transfer of this delightful but genuinely scary classic in a special Blu Ray
edition, complete with a lecture-slash-interview from the cult director Richard
Stanley, an overview of the Soviet fantasy and SF by John Leman Riley, an
author of books on Shostakovich and film music, and three silent shorts, including
Queen of Spades, super-scary adaptation of a Alexander Pushkin story. Хорошо́!
12. The Emperor’s Naked
Army Marches On (1987, Region Free, Second Run)
One of the most
controversial and outright disturbing documentaries ever made, Hara Kazuo’s The
Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is both a searing indictment of the
normalization of war experience and a radical challenge to the ethical and
epistemological perimeters of a documentary.
Okuzaki Kenzo, a self-proclaimed anarchist and a war veteran, is a deeply
unhinged and maniacally driven individual who would stop at nothing to uncover
the whitewashed truths about his squadron’s experiences at the tail end of the
Pacific War— cruelties, murder, cannibalism.
The uber-documentarian Hara obsessively follows Okuzaki around, recording
his increasingly urgent, angry and, frankly, frightening behavior, as the
latter repeatedly violates the privacy of the fellow Pacific War veterans,
disrupts the latter’s lives, and finally resorts to near-lethal violence to “squeeze”
the truths out of them. If you had anticipated a genteel, “Japanese-like”
rumination about the tragedies of a war, you would be knocked into speechless state
of shock or a hasty retreat after hitting the eject button. Either way, you
will never be able to think the same about Japanese war experience or
documentary as an art-form after watching this jaw-dropping, deeply disturbing
(but also, in many ways, positively exhilarating) film.
Amazingly, Hara Kazuo was
actively involved in not only the transfer but also overall package design of
this Second Run Blu Ray, providing a brand-new interview, alarmingly candid and
illuminating. Not to be missed is a thoughtfully curated essays on the film by
Tony Rayns, Jason Wood and Abe Mark Nornes’s extremely thought-provoking
write-up of a conversation between Hara and Michael Moore (yup, that Michael
Moore).
11. The Chant of Jimmie
Blacksmith (1978, Region B, Eureka! Masters of Cinema)
Fred Schepisi, one of the prominent
Aussie immigrants to Hollywood who got started in ‘70s and early ‘80s, along
with Peter Weir, Philip Noyce, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong and, ahem, George
Miller, had already debuted with great acclaim with The Devil’s Playground
(1976), perhaps the definitive Catholic Boy’s Boarding School film in cinema
history, but he became internationally renowned for this overwhelming
fictionalized account of the real-life “Breelong Murders” in 1900, that confronted
head-on the darkest chapter in the history of his country. Shockingly gruesome and unflinching, at times
heart-stoppingly beautiful, calmly observant yet seething with urgency and
suppressed outrage, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith captures that awesome
moment in which the cumulative experiences of racism and exploitation and the damage
it inflicts on human spirits, like swelling, scorching rivers of magma that flow
underground, undetected for decades, suddenly erupts to the surface, and in the
matter of seconds obliterate human lives.
In releasing this title, Eureka has
employed the Australia-based Umbrella Entertainment’s new 4K transfer for its
longer (2 hour 2 minutes) domestic release version and has done its own remastering
for the slightly truncated (1 hour 47 minutes) international release version,
resulting in two noticeably different color schemes, an intriguing choice for
the consumers. The supplements, starting
with two commentaries, are firmly centered on director Fred Schepisi, the most
interesting for me being a Q & A session with actor Geoffrey Rush interviewing
Schepisi following a special screening during the 2008 Melbourne International
Film Festival.
10. Rogue Male (1976,
Region B, British Film Institute)
A surprise dual-format
release from the BFI, Rogue Male (the intriguing title is apparently a
reference to a bull elephant separated from its herd, yet who stalwartly
survives, fighting the natural elements) is not so much a remake of Fritz
Lang's Man Hunt (1941) as a return to the latter's literary source, Geoffrey
Household's popular 1939 novel. This BBC
adaptation, filmed with obviously limited production resources nonetheless
holds its own against the American adaptation, turning its fidelity to the
source novel's gruff eccentricity and unadorned brutality into one of its
virtues. The appropriate re-adjustment of the film's historical context also
yields some additional pleasures, as it is quite openly critical of not only
Neville Chamberlain's appeasement, which is to be expected, but also the
chauvinistic and isolationist mentalities of the British elite society in late
'30s (difficult not to notice some eye-rolling parallels with the Brexit in all
these).
Aside from production
history-centered supplements, the excerpts from Eva Braun's home movies (approximately
7 minutes), somehow appearing slicker and professional movie-like than its
recreation in the present film, and a reel of the British Union of Fascist
March documentary (about 9 minutes) are also included. The latter, full of
eager-beaver white Britishers, men and women, in comfortable, everyday getups,
grinning and giving enthusiastic Sieg Heil salutes to the camera, is
scored to an eerie, ambient electronic music composed by Chris Zabriskie (aptly
titled "Raise Your Hand If You Think Evil is Increasing in This
World").
9. Hammer Collection No.
4: Faces of Fear (1958-1962, Region Free, Powerhouse Indicator)
Is it just me, or as
Indicator piles up their fabulous box-sets of Hammer films and moves further
away from the best-known Dracula and Frankenstein films toward the more obscure
titles, it seems to me that they are doubling and tripling their efforts to
present as much information and analysis as they could jam pack into these sets? While we eagerly await volume 5 of Hammer
film collection from Indicator, open for our perusal is their “Faces of Fear”
collection, the highlight of which should surely be Joseph Losey’s apocalyptic horror-SFThe Damned.
Just speaking for this
enigmatic and coldly superior indictment of the Cold War fatalism in the guise of scientific rationality, it is here
available in a new 2K restoration of both 1 hour 36 minute international cut
and the 1 hour 28 minutes domestic release cut, with literally hours of video
and audio supplements that cover all aspects of production from its director,
screenplay, location shooting, actors and music in addition to exhaustive academic
and film-historical analysis of the film and its cultural contexts. At this juncture it is quite impossible for
me to imagine another Blu Ray edition that could even equal, much less surpass,
Indicator’s frankly obsessive-looking husbandry of their catalogue titles.
8. A Bucket of Blood (1959,
Region Free, Olive Signature Series)
A public domain title
whose copyright protection has lapsed poses a singular but familiar problem for
the producers and consumers of DVDs and Blu Rays. Basically, this situation
allows any cheapjack company to release the disc of such a title without any
concern for the best presentation, flooding the market with inferior, bargain-bin
products. This in turn ends up taking away financial incentives for a decent
label to invest in restoration of the original elements, reducing a chance of the
title ever being seen in its best conditions. There have been some prominent
examples of this specific type of nightmare for collectors, and it seems that
Roger Corman’s Bucket of Blood might end up joining the limbo at least
for a while.
But not to worry! Olive Signature Series, so far mainly notable
for spiffy re-packaging of their earlier releases (High Noon, Invasion
of the Body Snatchers) into must-have special editions, has joined the fray
and given us a new 4K remastered edition of this cult classic, packed to the gills
with witty and informative supplements, including an interview with the
91-year-old Dick Miller (who had passed away in January 2019: you will be
missed!). Seen in this glorious new
transfer, A Bucket of Blood is revealed not so much a light-headed topical
comedy as Corman’s trial run of sorts for his Poe adaptations, a genuinely
effective psychological thriller that easily renders into obsolescence the snickering put-downs mainly based on its parodistic presentation of the Californian
beatnik milieu.
7. The Ida Lupino
Filmmaker Collection (1949-1953, Region A, Kino Lorber)
Perennially the figure cited
when someone asks if there was any notable female director in the history of
Hollywood cinema, Ida Lupino the director is best known for the genuinely
unsettling film noir The Hitch-Hiker, but this collection gathers
together in one boxset a strikingly diverse examples of her producing-directing-screenwriting-and-acting
prowess, from her uncredited directorial debut film Not Wanted to her
harrowing chronicle of a young dancer’s struggle with polio (Never Fear)
and to a thoroughly absorbing examination of the self-delusion of an American
patriarch (played with sensitivity by Edmond O’Brien) who believes his dual
marriage to two women (played by Joan Fontaine and Lupino, the newly-married-wife
and ex-wife of the film’s screenwriter and producer Collier Young) is a perfectly
workable arrangement (Bigamist).
Taken as a whole, Lupino’s
keen eyes for dynamic cinematography, social consciousness and tough approach to
characterization all declare themselves in these works, making a powerful case
for her American auteur status. The collection is graced with excellent
and committed commentaries by the likes of Imogen Sara Smith, Kat Ellinger,
Barbara Scharres and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and a reprint of the pioneering
review-analysis of the Lupino opuses by the late critic Ronnie Scheib, a specialist
in documentary films at Variety.
6. Cluny Brown (1946,
Region A, Criterion Collection)
Every year I end up
including, without really intending to do so, what you might call a small gem,
an unassuming if not entirely obscure film directed by classic masters in
between their better known great works or at the tail end of their magnificent
careers. Last year it was Frank Borzage’s
Moonrise: this year it is Ernst Lubitsch’s last film, an utterly beguiling
romantic comedy from 1946. It might be perhaps a stretch to read Cluny Brown
as a feminist film, yet the eponymous orphan whose life aspiration is nothing
other than working as a competent plumber, played with such heart-dissolving
radiance by Jennifer Jones, is definitely not waiting for Charles Boyer’s “professor”
to come and save her from an obligatory marriage to the town apothecarist.
Breezy, witty, yet unexpectedly
moving in its moment of authentic insight and compassion toward its verbose, life-loving
protagonists, Cluny Brown is a complete delight as well as a motion
picture that gives you the spiritual equivalent of dipping your toes into a stream
of brilliant, clear water after an hour of satisfactory hike. And, of course, leave it to Criterion
Collection to bring it to the attention of collectors like myself.
5. Akio Jissoji: The
Buddhist Trilogy (1970-1974, Region B, Arrow Academy)
If the ability of a label
to locate, curate and present in the best available quality the rarest, the
least expected yet most deserving titles in the vast ocean of world cinema of
the past was the only yardstick for inclusion in this list, then it would be
handily dominated by Arrow Video, even elbowing out Criterion Collection, especially
since they have established the Arrow Academy imprint. The Sorrow and the
Pity, Khrustalyov, My Car!, The Voice of the Moon, Walerian Borowczyk’s
Short Films and Animation Collection, Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig, and
more idiosyncratic yet essential titles have been available through it, in
addition to the arthouse staples such as Fassbinders, Woody Allens, Eric
Rohmers simultaneously covered by Criterion, Masters of Cinema and other
labels. Yet, the one area that they truly leave their competitors in the dust are
their catalogue of positively amazing Japanese-language titles, often packaged
in bountiful special editions: Suzuki Seijun’s Taisho Trilogy and The
Early Years volumes, the seven-disc set Kiju Yoshida: Love+ Anarchism,
Horrors of Malformed Men, The Bloodthirsty Trilogy and, the most
amazing of them all, Uchida Tomu’s Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji.
Not surprisingly at all, Arrow
Video outdid itself again in 2019 by dropping on us the boxset that contains not
only the so-called Buddhist trilogy, This Transient Life, Mandala
and Poem, but also a later companion piece It was a Faint Dream, a
series of Art Theater Guild productions directed by Jissoji Akio, well known in
the field of SF-fantasy TV (some key episodes of Ultra Seven, for
instance). Aggressively expressionistic, with their madly roaming and sprinting cameras,
and disturbing in their amoral and politically suspect pursuits of beauty and understanding,
Jissoji’s quasi-experimental, insanely vigorous films are tough to assess
without prejudice, even tougher to get out of your mind once you have encountered
them. And in truth I cannot think of a better venue than this meticulously
packaged Blu Ray edition to access these films. As is the case with La
Prisonniere, walking through these dangerous yet enticing pathways with us
are sensitive yet candid (non-defensive) commentaries and introductions by David
Desser, the premier English-language authority on the ‘60s and ‘70s Japanese
art cinema.
4. Detour (1945, Region
A, Criterion Collection)
Something of a surprise
in the sense that Detour, a notorious Poverty-Row production that, under
the direction of Edgar G. Ulmer, has become one of the premier examples of
cinematic nihilism, perhaps the purest distillation of the film noir
worldview ever committed to celluloid, might have been a better fit with an
Olive Signature or Arrow Academy release.
In the real world it was of
course Criterion Collection that carefully restored the problematic elements
into a 4K HD transfer, presenting the film in its pristine, mesmerizing new
looks along with a host of great extras, spearheaded by Edgar G. Ulmer: The
Man Off-Screen, a witty, ironic but extremely informative and provocative
documentary about the ostensible “King of B” auteur.
3. Godzilla: The Show-Era
Films (1954-1975, Region A, Criterion Collection)
Hey, I have little to say
about this collection, other than to note that one of the reasons cited by at
least one fellow reviewer-collector for not including it in the year’s end
list, that nearly all of the Godzilla films found here have been previously
released in the HD format, just did not fly with me. On the contrary, I suspect Criterion’s massive
collector’s album— with slots for eight Blu Rays carved into a hardcover picture-book
cum jacket— is precisely designed to entice those of us, who have double
and triple-dipped into the physical media well as far as Big G is concerned.
I mean, what can I say?
Would Toho Co. be able to come up with something like this set? Not in a
million years. And yeah, we really
deserve to see Godzilla vs. Megalon (in Japanese, by the way, there is
no “n:” it’s just Megalo. And it is Radon in Japanese, a shortened form
of Pteranodon, not Rodan, while we are at it) in a sparking HD presentation. People
pay twenty bucks or more to purchase a 4K Ultra HD Blu Ray copy of Transformers:
The Last Knight, for God’s sake.
2. Ultra Q (1966, Region
A, Mill Creek Entertainment)
So it seems that the
Showa-Era Godzilla collection would be the only item in the Japanese special
effects-SF sub-genre to make it to this year’s list, but no, there was yet
another surprise waiting in the trenches.
Mill Creek Entertainment has previously released DVD collections of Ultraman
and Ultra Seven, unfortunately failing to clear up the controversy
surrounding the sub-par quality of the transfer of the former (apparently due
to the contractual mishap on the part of Tsuburaya Productions). Now they are coming up with Blu Ray versions
of these iconic series (and to the fandom’s delight, appear to be committed to
turn out all classic Ultraman series from ‘60s and ‘70s in HD, including Return
of Ultraman and Ultraman Ace), but it was their release of
the proto-Ultraman series, the superbly intelligent and provocative Ultra Q,
that really made collectors like myself sit up and notice.
Clearly benchmarking the
US TV genre staples such as The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Ultra
Q, ambitiously attempting to showcase at least one theatrical-film-grade
monster or creature every week, was a happy confluence of high production
quality, unbridled imagination opening up the sites for some genuinely
intriguing SF ideas plus provocative social allegories, and swashbuckling but
charmingly naïve protagonists. A true
classic of its kind, Ultra Q is presented by Mill Creek in an astonishingly
excellent series of transfers, easily besting their Ultraman and Ultra
Seven Blu Rays in clarity and detail. By the way, you might think that,
even if a bit expensive, a True Bone (a Korean reference… sorry, I was teaching
the other day about the ultra-rigid hierarchy of aristocratic categorization in
the ancient Korea known as Bone Rank system) collector like myself might want
to purchase Japanese releases, even if missing English subs. As a matter of fact, there is a native
release of the 4K UHD boxset of Ultra Q.
It is no frills-bare bones, no English subs edition, and officially costs
approximately 700$ per pop. No, that’s not
a misprint of seventy dollars, it’s seven hundred dollars. Can’t
wait to see how much dough it could fetch a year later at e-Bay, huh? Thanks, but no thanks, we (and judging from
Amazon.co.jp pages, droves of Japanese fans as well) shall stick to the Mill
Creek boxset.
1. Klute (1971, Region A, Criterion Collection)
So it would have seemed
that Godzilla or Ultra Q took the top seat this year but, as usual, a
rediscovery of another “minor classic” ‘70s (technically it’s 1968 to 1977, but
let’s not split hairs) American motion picture elbowed and kneed into it, pushing
away gargantuan Japanese beasties. I
hope I could spend some time before I die to talk about why I believe the ‘70s
American cinema is one of the (perhaps the) culminating apexes of modern
cinematic arts, and why the films made in this period could be subject to
endless cycles of rediscovery and reappreciation and would not be exhausted of
their potential. Please don’t be like
those European auteurs who need to emancipate themselves from their
narrow, cigarette-smoke-drenched, male-centered cinephilic notions. Yeah yeah, snicker, go ahead and yap about
the freaking ’68 “revolution” until your kidneys go out. So many of these people are not qualified to
lick dusts off the sandals of George Roy Hill, Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula or
even Arthur Penn.
And finally to irk you
into a brain-exploding apoplexy, Jane Fonda is a great actress. Without having to be nobody’s artistic “muse,”
I might add (Klute was filmed just as Fonda was divorcing Roger Vadim
and being subject to vilification as “Hanoi Jane.” But the film precisely
captures her real feminist struggle in her utterly devastating performance. That
only assures its timeless status as an American work of art).
Well, I am done. Positively
miraculous that I could complete this list again, without either ruining my day
job or killing myself, but hey, that’s power of the physical media. I don’t know how the US presidential election
or South Korean general election would turn out, or if Parasite would
actually win the Best Director or even Best Picture Oscar (wouldn’t that be something?!)
but I can be absolutely certain that another
tsunami of desirable Blu Rays would assault my senses in 2020.
Here’s my respectful bow
to Arrow Video, Powerhouse Indicator, Kino Lorber, Criterion Collection, Mill
Creek, Eureka, The British Film Institute, Severin Films, Second Run, 101 Films
and many other unmentioned but equally hardworking labels out there, for
putting out these Blu Rays. And to many
of my compatriots out there, who love watching “old movies” to death.
