The 20 best home ents releas­es of 2016

Anoth­er year, anoth­er vin­tage crop of home enter­tain­ment releas­es. In this era where movies are cheap and in mas­sive abun­dance, there are still com­pa­nies mak­ing beau­ti­ful­ly pack­aged box sets, minute­ly researched spe­cial edi­tions and exclu­sive releas­es of lost clas­sics. Here are 20 that made their way to the UK in 2016 which we were rather fond of.

The first mis­sive of Apichat­pong ​“Joe” Weerasethakul can be seen in all its restored glo­ry on this immac­u­late Sec­ond Run blu-ray. The Thai maverick’s debut fea­ture film proves from its open­ing frames that the Palme d’Or win­ning mak­er of such lux­u­ri­ant, erot­ic and polit­i­cal screen-poems as Uncle Boon­mee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Ceme­tery of Splen­dour emerged from the film­mak­ing womb ful­ly formed, with this intrigu­ing ​‘exquis­ite corpse’ film in which a sto­ry is extend­ed by each new mem­ber of a small com­mu­ni­ty. Buy it here.

Peter Yates’ ele­giac 1977 crime saga, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, sug­gests that it’s those at the bot­tom of life’s bar­rel who often suf­fer the most. Robert Mitchum chan­nels a life­time of play­ing bruised lon­ers, crest­fall­en tough guys and charis­mat­ic cads into the char­ac­ter of lov­able Irish lug, Eddie ​‘Fin­gers’ Coyle, a low lev­el Boston gun-run­ner who’s been sur­viv­ing on charm and good will alone. One of the sad­dest mod­ern noir films ever made. Buy it here.

Long avail­able in a print that was more fuzz than fight, King Hu’s bal­let­ic 1971 mar­tial arts epic final­ly got the home ents release it deserved care of Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma. One of those films where a three hour and 20 minute run time flash by in a heart­beat. Buy it here.

Adapt­ed from a pulp nov­el by Ger­ald Petievich, William Friedkin’s 1985 film To Live and Die in LA is an hys­ter­i­cal, heat­ed west coast polici­er which oper­ates with very sim­ple maths: the more des­per­ate William Petersen’s secret ser­vice agent Richard Chance is to suc­ceed in his mis­sion, the nas­ti­er his foil (Willem Dafoe’s dev­il-may-care coun­ter­feit­er, Eric Mas­ters) becomes. Strap your­self in for the car chase to end all car chas­es, immac­u­late­ly ren­dered on this gor­geous disc. Buy it here.

Even though Roy Schei­der is the lead in this seedy-af ​’80s noir, it’s the pres­ence of John Glover as a flop­py-fringed Machi­avel­lian psy­cho-nut who push­es it into great­ness. 52 Pick-Up is a film which exem­pli­fies all that was great and rad­i­cal about ​“trash” dis­tri­b­u­tion label Canon, par­tic­u­lar­ly their will­ing­ness to always out-grime the com­pe­ti­tion, what­ev­er the price. Nasty. Buy it here.

When date movies go bad. Even though Japan­ese direc­tor Takashi Miike has been punch­ing out eccen­tric genre flicks at an ungod­ly rate since mak­ing this stun­ning revenge/​torture endurance test back in 1999, he’s nev­er quite man­aged to bet­ter its venus fly trap-like nar­ra­tive manoeu­vring and unwatch­ably graph­ic eye-pop­ping finale. Watch with moth­er. Buy it here.

Vera Chytilová’s strik­ing 1963 fea­ture debut, Some­thing Dif­fer­ent, is as great and impor­tant a film as her kalei­do­scop­ic, anar­chic 1966 clas­sic, Daisies. It’s a film that weaves con­cur­rent tales of mid­dle-aged women deal­ing with their vary­ing social posi­tions: one is a a house­wife strug­gling to bring up her only son, and so decides to jug­gle an extra-mar­i­tal suit­or to ease the pain; the oth­er is a famous bal­let dancer who is prac­tic­ing tire­less­ly for a big com­pe­ti­tion. This Sec­ond Run DVD comes bun­dled with the excel­lent short, A Bag­ful of Fleas. Buy it here.

This hilar­i­ous­ly fun­ny debut fea­ture from Elaine May is a mod­ern screw­ball on a par with the clas­sics. It’s the tale of a despi­ca­ble trust-fund jagoff whose psy­chot­ic lust for mon­ey leaves him severe­ly want­i­ng in the human com­pas­sion depart­ment. Wal­ter Matthau is exem­plary as the can­tan­ker­ous play­boy Hen­ry Gra­ham, in search of a wealthy dowa­ger to fund his pam­pered lifestyle and whom he can mur­der when the time is right. Enter May her­self as Hen­ri­et­ta Low­ell, a botany pro­fes­sor who may be the most believ­ably gawky char­ac­ter in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. Trea­sure this Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma release. Buy it here.

We now take block­buster bat­tle scenes for grant­ed as arcs of CGI blood spurt and fly over the faces of gurn­ing grunts. British film­mak­er Peter Watkins not only rein­vent­ed the clas­sic bat­tle sequence for the mod­ern age, but used the par­lance of TV news to offer a new, inti­mate per­spec­tives on vio­lent moments from his­to­ry. This one details the tac­ti­cal ins and outs of the bat­tle of Cul­lo­den in 1746, and this vital BFI Blu-ray also comes with his medi­um-length shock­er, The War Game, a faux instruc­tion­al guide for when Eng­land is inevitably oblit­er­at­ed by falling nukes. Buy it here.

One of those lost gold­en nuggets that has man­aged to shim­my its way to the sur­face of mod­ern film cul­ture, Nor­man Foster’s (no rela­tion) superb San Fran­cis­co-set noir thriller packs insane amounts of action and ener­gy into its 79-minute run­time. It’s redis­cov­er­ies like this that make you thank­ful for the good work enact­ed by fes­ti­vals, pro­gram­mers and researchers who make it their pro­fes­sion­al duty to make sure great cin­e­ma like this isn’t lost to the sands of time. Add this Arrow release to your list of must-buys. Buy it here.

Joe Dante’s mid-career mas­ter­work chan­nels the anx­i­eties of height­ened cold war ten­sions in Amer­i­ca with the rise of inter­ac­tive schlock hor­ror films at the cin­e­ma. John Good­man excels as sil­ver-tongued show­man, Lawrence Woolsey, who’s bring­ing his patent­ed, house-shak­ing tech­nique ​‘Rum­ble-rama’ to the mass­es just as Rus­sia are prim­ing their nukes and aim­ing them at Key West. Buy it here.

The unbear­ably sad debut fea­ture from the late Sene­galese direc­tor Ous­mane Sem­bene details the crush­ing real­i­ties of coloni­sa­tion in the sto­ry of Dioua­na (Mbis­sine Thérèse Diop) a wife and moth­er who fol­lows employ­ment from her native Dakkar to a hell­hole apart­ment in Nice. A para­ble of mod­ern slave labour and knee-jerk white oppres­sion, the film’s tumul­tuous 20 minute cli­max lands punch after punch after punch. This BFI release is of a new­ly-restored dig­i­tal print and comes with Sembene’s first ever short fea­ture, Borom Sar­ret, from 1963. Buy it here

In the ​’90s, when you talked about Japan­ese cin­e­ma, you were essen­tial­ly talk­ing about the work of Takeshi Kitano. After mak­ing a name for him­self with a series of hard-edged gang­ster films, he deliv­ered his mas­ter­piece in 1997, this stun­ning melo­dra­ma about a retired, mono­syl­lab­ic cop tying up a vari­ety of famil­ial and pro­fes­sion­al loose ends. This is the mod­ern equiv­a­lent to Nico­las Ray’s mas­ter­piece, On Dead­ly Ground. Buy it here

While Every­body Wants Some!! rides high in our list of best new fea­tures of 2016, let’s not for­get that one of Richard Linklater’s great ear­ly works made the leap to Blu-ray this year. This Roto­scoped dream diary fol­lows a man hav­ing trou­ble depart­ing from his nat­ur­al sleep state, meet­ing a host of eccen­tric and talk­a­tive char­ac­ters as he attempts to return to the real world. Buy it here

When it comes to idio­syn­crat­ic clas­si­cal para­bles filmed in a series of sin­u­ous, immac­u­late­ly chore­o­graphed long takes in the mid­dle of a mas­sive field, then there’s very lit­tle that beats Mik­lós Jancsó’s colour­ful and dra­mat­ic retelling of the Elec­tra myth. Even though it’s a film in which every frame daz­zles in its own unique way, the film’s pow­er is deliv­ered in its impas­sioned pol­i­tics and utter­ly com­mit­ted per­for­mances. Buy it here

This is a big deal. Books have been writ­ten and, no doubt, stern words have been trad­ed on the sub­ject of Abel Gance’s stu­pen­dous 1927 his­tor­i­cal epic, main­ly with regard to film preser­va­tion and eth­i­cal ques­tions regard­ing cin­e­mat­ic recon­struc­tion. Piec­ing a vin­tage film togeth­er from mate­ri­als secured from sources around the globe isn’t just a sim­ple case of find­ing the seg­ments of a sprawl­ing puz­zle. The BFI’s three-disc Blu-ray is the prod­uct of years of ded­i­cat­ed work by film his­to­ri­an Kevin Brown­low who per­haps knows this film as inti­mate­ly as the direc­tor him­self once did. With­out mean­ing to sound too reduc­tive, this rous­ing biog­ra­phy of the great­est mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian of the mod­ern age plays like super­hero saga, replete with ori­gin sto­ry, self-real­i­sa­tion and then, final­ly a tri­umphant gal­lop into bat­tle, filmed with three sep­a­rate cam­eras and tint­ed to resem­ble the Tri­colour flag. Buy it here

This vital DVD release from Sec­ond Run helps to answer an impor­tant ques­tion: where in the hell did exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary mak­er Joshua Oppen­heimer come from, and where is he going? Col­lect­ing togeth­er his ear­ly shorts and fea­tures, this remark­able set shows a film­mak­er paint­ing with ideas, stream­lin­ing his pol­i­tics and rewrit­ing the rule book when it comes to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing. Buy it here

Bil­ly Wilder’s 1978 film Fedo­ra was his last tru­ly great fea­ture. It was large­ly dis­missed upon release as being too fud­dy-dud­dy and seem­ing­ly chan­nel­ing the inter­ests and fash­ions of a bygone era. Yet it now defi­ant­ly stands as a lat­ter-day part­ner piece to Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go – a cocka­mamie detec­tive saga which con­ceals a heart­break­ing and sub­ver­sive dis­course on iden­ti­ty, star­dom, dou­bles and the tragedy of undy­ing love. Bra­vo Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma. Buy it here

The top two spots are reserved for the big guns. And in the case of Arrow’s vital Jacques Riv­ette col­lec­tion, we mean that quite lit­er­al­ly, as its cen­tre­piece, the lost mys­tery clas­sic, Out 1, runs at a cool 13 hours. Yet this isn’t just deserv­ing of praise for the amaz­ing films with­in the pack­age, but the pack­age itself, which is one of the most gor­geous home ents objet d’art you’ll like­ly have on your shelf. Buy it here

Vic­tor by a coun­try mile, this painstak­ing col­lec­tion of Alan Clark’s film and TV work for the BBC offers a por­tal back to a time when pub­lic fund­ing was used to make sub­ver­sive, repul­sive and explo­sive Art with a cap­i­tal A. Every film in this gigan­tic set is wor­thy of its spot, pre­sent­ing a film artist who nev­er rest­ed on his lau­rels and who always pre­sent­ed the mate­r­i­al from an array of writ­ers with max­i­mum clar­i­ty and impact. 1987’s Road, which was one of his lat­er fea­tures, stands as one of the great­est achieve­ments by a British film­mak­er. Save up your pock­et mon­ey, save up your tokens, and acquire this box set post haste. Buy it here