The best home enter­tain­ment releas­es of 2015

Film is dead. Dig­i­tal is dead. DVD is dead. Pro­jec­tion is dead. Down­load­ing is dead. What­ev­er… In recent years, there’s been a notice­able uptick in the qual­i­ty of home enter­tain­ment pack­ages that are being put out into the mar­ket­place. Extra­or­di­nary amounts of time, ener­gy and exper­tise are sunk into every new release that hits the shelves, and here’s our small sur­vey of some of the best from 2015.

“A sick film made by sick peo­ple and for sick peo­ple.” No, this wasn’t the hair-tear­ing front-page procla­ma­tions of some Mary White­house-like moral guardian or con­ser­v­a­tive tabloid edi­tor, but the words of Rank, the dis­trib­u­tors of Nico­las Roeg’s baroque, time-switch­ing study of an abu­sive rela­tion­ship from 1980. Though the words ring of stan­dard hyper­bol­ic out­rage, they appear ill-placed, espe­cial­ly as Bad Tim­ing can now be seen as an extreme­ly seri­ous film which explores its sub­ject with­out even a scin­til­la of fatu­ous provo­ca­tion. And this new Blu-ray looks slick as all hell.

It’s not obvi­ous where to begin with Bill Gunn’s one-of-a-kind Gan­ja & Hess from 1973. The frame­work and trap­pings of the Blax­ploita­tion movie have been pulped togeth­er, frozen, smashed into a mil­lion pieces and then recon­struct­ed as an exper­i­men­tal vam­pire movie. This was a gig that its writer-and-direc­tor took on as a some­thing to fill up the fleapits, and it was duly sliced to rib­bons after luke­warm pre­view screen­ings. Eureka’s Blu-ray edi­tion does much to sal­vage its rep­u­ta­tion as a vital frag­ment in the his­to­ry of black inde­pen­dent cinema.

Those who thought that James Bond could be a mite unscrupu­lous when it came to extract­ing infor­ma­tion from his pris­on­ers might want to approach Sid­ney Lumet’s eye-water­ing­ly vio­lent The Offence with cau­tion. Con­tain­ing what might be con­sid­ered a career-bests per­for­mance from Sean Con­nery, the film tells of ultra-jad­ed police detec­tive John­son who, while inter­ro­gat­ing a man sus­pect­ed of rap­ing a child, just takes things a lit­tle too close to the edge. A fas­ci­nat­ing film about about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of sup­press­ing per­son­al emo­tion in the search for jus­tice (what­ev­er that is).

July of 2015 saw the untime­ly death of wrestling star and some­time actor Rod­dy Piper at the age of 61, and the wave of remem­brances often drew upon quo­ta­tions from his star­ring role in 1988’s exem­plary and ball-out fun sci-fi noir, They Live, by John Car­pen­ter. We too are all out of bub­ble gum, but this new Blu-ray edi­tion from Stu­dio Canal allowed us to see the faces of those despi­ca­ble alien inter­lop­ers with as-yet-unimag­ined clarity.

This anti-cap­i­tal­ist para­ble about finan­cial self-suf­fi­cien­cy and its inher­ent pros and cons is the direc­to­r­i­al debut of Michael Mann (not includ­ing the made-for-TV movie, The Jeri­cho Mile) and it sure­ly ranks as one of the most assured and soul­ful first fea­tures of the mod­ern age. And it’s one of those movies where, even though it’s James Caan’s name up there in lights above the title, the real star of Thief is the the city of Chica­go cir­ca 1981, a locale where the seething under­bel­ly of pri­vate, organ­ised cor­rup­tion is vis­i­ble on every street and boule­vard. It looks espe­cial­ly great on Arrow’s new Blu-ray edition.

Maybe this 1983 film can now be read as David Cronenberg’s answer to the ques­tion that haunts the wak­ing dreams of cul­tur­al crit­ics – is TV real­ly bet­ter than film? Sado­masochism, digi­tised cult lead­ers, can­cer epi­demics and Deb­bie Har­ry stub­bing a fag out on her bosom, the film still stands up as one of the director’s rich­est and most intel­lec­tu­al­ly unhinged works, con­cern­ing our wor­ry­ing rela­tion­ship with the mov­ing image and how it both dam­ages and empow­ers us. With sex and gore.

John Ford’s rhap­sod­ic John Wayne vehi­cle, The Qui­et Man, is a film about the dif­fi­cul­ty of return­ing to your roots that is played for salty guf­faws, some of which def­i­nite­ly don’t con­cur with mod­ern con­cep­tions of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. But the film is in essence a plea for peace­able co-exis­tence, a cri­tique of base­less, small-town ter­ri­to­r­i­al grudges, and a request that cul­tur­al out­siders are treat­ed as equals, not as aliens. This ace Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma edi­tion fea­tures a mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary about the film as well as a new­ly-com­mis­sioned video essay by John Ford expert, Tag Gallagher.

This fug­gy Slo­va­kian para­ble from 1968 by Eduard Grečn­er con­cerns a surly pot­ter named Drag­on (Radovan Lukavský) who is forcibly deposed from his dirt-poor moun­tain ham­let. The twist is, he didn’t real­ly do any­thing wrong. He re-enters the fray at the begin­ning of the film sport­ing a mean-look­ing eye-patch – a bril­liant tech­ni­cal touch which sug­gests that Drag­on is not a man to be med­dled with while also allow­ing Grečn­er to flip back and forth in the time­line so we grad­u­al­ly learn the rea­son for this mys­te­ri­ous man’s out­sider sta­tus. A peach of a release from Sec­ond Run DVD.

The ethe­re­al com­plex­i­ties of the love tri­an­gle have sel­dom been expressed in such brac­ing and emo­tion­al­ly har­row­ing detail as they are in Fei Mu’s post­war clas­sic, Spring In A Small Town. Aside from the actors and dia­logue, Fei – who died at the age of 44 and made only one more film – cre­ates extra hits of pure emo­tion through glid­ing cam­era move­ments and the melan­choly man­ner in which frames his con­flict­ed char­ac­ters against the unfor­giv­ing land­scape. This BFI Blu-ray gave a long-out-of-cir­cu­la­tion clas­sic a vital new platform.

This new Blu-ray trans­fer of Claude Lanzmann’s mono­lith­ic audit of the Holo­caust is impor­tant as it comes with four sup­ple­men­tary works made from footage which Lanz­mann shot while mak­ing Shoah, but which he didn’t feel gelled with the film’s cen­tral the­sis and struc­ture. Two of the films exam­ine the ​“mod­el ghet­to” of There­sien­stadt: A Vis­i­tor from the Liv­ing (1999) is from the per­spec­tive of a Red Cross envoy who was fooled by a grotesque, Nazi-orches­trat­ed the­atre which (briefly) pre­sent­ed the town as a cheery lit­tle burg; Last of the Unjust (2013) exam­ines deci­sions made by a Rab­bi ensconced as one of the population’s main spokespeople.

The utter­ly har­row­ing Sobibór, 14 Octo­ber 1943, 4pm (2001) plays with the cut-glass intrigue of a thriller, detail­ing an inno­v­a­tive and vio­lent escape plan from Sobibór con­cen­tra­tion camp pri­or to its clo­sure, while 2010’s The Kars­ki Report details Pol­ish diplo­mat Jan Karski’s meet­ing with Roo­sevelt and his attempts to con­vey the hor­rors occur­ring in Europe. With the addi­tion of these four extra films, one of the greats of cin­e­ma just got greater.

Made at the same time that the kids of the French New Wave were enshrin­ing pup­py love in real, lived-in loca­tions, Nag­isa Ôshima’s rois­ter­ing mis­ery aria, Cru­el Sto­ry of Youth, is a film appar­ent­ly hell bent on quash­ing any sug­ges­tion that hope springs eter­nal for the wide eyed go-get­ters post-war gen­er­a­tion. A shat­ter­ing film, with a final shot that sure­ly must rank as one of the most utter­ly bleak in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. The colours on this Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma release pop hard.

The Annu­al LWLies Award for Excel­lence in the Field of Cin­e­mat­ic Exca­va­tion goes this year to the Sec­ond Run DVD team for dig­ging up this sin­gu­lar and shat­ter­ing Czech doc­u­men­tary from 1972 by direc­tor Dusan Hanák. At once life-affirm­ing and inef­fa­bly melan­cholic, the film takes on the sim­ple task of film­ing those mem­bers of the elder­ly and infirm scat­tered around an unnamed (and pover­ty-strick­en) env­i­ron and hav­ing them answer ques­tions about, not so much their lives, but the def­i­n­i­tions of ​“life” they have forged from this priv­i­leged posi­tion of expe­ri­ence. Exceptional.

Georges Franju’s end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing Goth­ic hor­ror offers a sin­cere homage to Universal’s mon­ster movie cycle while tack­ling mod­ern con­cerns such as med­ical ethics, body image and unseem­ly fam­i­ly ties. And it also con­tains gag-induc­ing gore effects. Though sim­ple and method­i­cal in its telling (almost like an oper­a­tion in itself), the sto­ry here is dif­fer­ent with every view­ing, and it’s up to the view­er to decide whether Pierre Brasseur’s Doc­tor Génessier is a vile mon­ster or a hope­less romantic.

There’s a scene in Har­mo­ny Korine’s Spring Break­ers in which James Franco’s tin-pot gang­ster Alien boasts of own­ing a TV which plays Scar­face on a loop all day, every day. You could imag­ine that if the direc­tor Quentin Taran­ti­no ever suc­cumbed to petit gang­ster­ism, his TV would show King Hu’s 1967 mar­tial arts epic, Drag­on Inn. It is the sim­ple tale of a demon­ic eunuch attempt­ing to cleanse the coun­try of a rival fam­i­ly – ​“you must not chop down the grass, but pull up the roots” is his poet­ic way of jus­ti­fy­ing mass mur­der. A vital restora­tion by Mas­ters of Cinema.

Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s 1962 mas­ter­work con­cerns the human para­dox of love, how phys­i­cal imped­i­ments such as walls, doors, jobs, clothes, streets, parks, trees, cars and pret­ty much all phys­i­cal mat­ter – includ­ing cork face­paint – dou­ble (beyond their prime func­tion) as a bar­ri­er between the pure for­mu­la­tion of a mean­ing­ful roman­tic con­nec­tion and our own list­less fac­to­ry set­ting. It’s a bit­ter­sweet film, about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of love, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of romance, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of ever con­nect­ing with anoth­er per­son on any­thing more than a pri­mal lev­el. Mon­i­ca Vit­ti is radi­ant, Alain Delon hope­less­ly dash­ing. If there’s no hope for them, what hope do we have? This Blu-ray edi­tion will help us to fund out.

Call it one of the all-time great west­erns, call it one of the all-time great films, what­ev­er your thoughts on John Ford’s low-slung take on the infa­mous Gun Fight at the OK Cor­ral, Arrow did a bang-up job with their Blu-ray release. If it wasn’t enough to see Joe MacDonald’s high-con­trast mono­chrome cin­e­matog­ra­phy mak­ing the Old West look like a land of shad­ows and light, this pack­age comes with Allan Dwan’s nifty 1939 take on the same mate­r­i­al, with Ran­dolph Scott accept­ing the job of Sher­iff of Tomb­stone in place of Hen­ry Fonda’s supreme­ly lan­guorous law-bringer.

Vojtech Jas­ný aggres­sive­ly bit­ter­sweet All My Good Coun­try­men was pro­duced dur­ing the ​“Prague Spring” of 1968 – the months pre­ced­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion of Czecho­slo­va­kia – and charts the seis­mic shifts in agrar­i­an farm­ing prac­tices which were foist­ed upon a peo­ple who were con­tent with the old ways. If that sounds a lit­tle dry, then it couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth, as this qua­si-sur­re­al panora­ma of shift­ing cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal tides man­ages to com­press all the breadth and scope of a TV ser­i­al into a sub-two hour run­time, reveal­ing itself as one of Sec­ond Run DVD’s finest and most user-friend­ly releas­es. Once seen, you’ll nev­er be able to set foot in a butcher’s shop again.

You can’t move for mas­ter­works in this breath­tak­ing Blu-ray box set which col­lects togeth­er a gigan­tic chunk of work by Dan­ish mae­stro of the aus­tere, Carl Theodor Drey­er. If, for the pur­pos­es of this appre­ci­a­tion, we’re forced at gun­point to select a sin­gle high­light, it would prob­a­bly be the inclu­sion of the director’s mes­meris­ing swan song, Gertrud, from 1964, which despite being maligned when it was release, has evolved into what many (includ­ing us) believe to be his mag­num opus. The sheer amount of love that has gone into putting this set togeth­er is pal­pa­ble, and this is a cinephile Christ­mas gift with­out equal.

Full dis­clo­sure: I wrote the book­let essay for this Arrow Blu-ray release of Robert Altman’s 1977 psy­chodra­ma, but that’s not going to stop me from hearti­ly endors­ing it in the strongest terms pos­si­ble. What it’s about remains as illu­sive as a half-remem­bered dream (which, in fact, is how it was writ­ten), chron­i­cling the lives of two eccen­tric and mys­te­ri­ous women, bril­liant­ly played by Sis­sy Spacek and Shel­ley Duvall, as they under­go a trans­fer­ence of per­son­al­i­ty. The film plays like a rid­dle that the direc­tor real­ly doesn’t want you to expend too much time solv­ing, instead lux­u­ri­at­ing in the char­ac­ter detail and the ripe social and polit­i­cal subtexts.

With so many great Blu-ray and DVD releas­es sched­uled every week, we hope you under­stand this this top twen­ty is culled from the titles that we were able to see. Some films inevitably slip through the net, but we’re extreme­ly glad that the Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma pack­age of Ray­mond Bernard’s stun­ning World War One saga wasn’t one of them.

The colour­ful cama­raderie of French recruits unable to com­pre­hend the true hor­ror of bat­tle is chipped away at across 110 ago­nis­ing min­utes as the wood­en cross­es of the title begin to amass at a dizzy­ing rate. Though it’s a sto­ry that’s as old and as obvi­ous at the hills, Bernard (a direc­tor who remains large­ly unher­ald­ed in the annuls of con­tem­po­rary cinephil­ia) employs every trick in the book as well as invent­ing a few new ones to express the sights, sounds, smells and sor­row of life in the trench­es. If you’re look­ing to take a gam­ble on any of this year’s Blu-ray releas­es, this real­ly is the one.