ScreenAnarchy Crew's Best of 2011: DVD/Blu-ray Release of the Year

It's always great to be able to (re)discover a movie during its home video release. These are some of the recent discs that excelled in enhancing or expanding some of our favorites

Santa Sangre (USA)
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

I wrote a 2500 word review of this release back in January. At the risk of overstating myself: in a year full of great releases, this one is the best. Bar-none. As I said back then:

Severin Films has released an essential edition of an essential film. If you have ever seen Santa Sangre before, you want this Blu-ray. If you have never seen Santa Sangre before, this is essential mind-expansion material. I highly recommend this disc. Severin has made both the DVD and Blu-ray editions available on REGION-FREE discs, so there is no reason not to get this. Thank you, Severin, for this incredible package!

Citizen Kane
Director: Orson Welles
by Sean Smithson

Finally, on Blu-ray. The Orson Welles megaclassic gets a loving restorative transfer and has never, ever looked better. The cinematography of Gregg Toland pops off the screen, and for anyone not already an acolyte of the black and white era, this is a perfect introduction as to why many argue it is the truer form of cinema. Bernard Herrman's score is alternately warm, and jarring, but balanced perfectly in the mix.

There has been no skimping on the extras either, with two archival commentaries from director Peter Bogdanovich and critic Roger Ebert, as well as cast interviews, deleted Scenes, a press book, the American Experience documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane, and even the War Of The Worlds broadcast that Mr. Welles terrified America with in 1938.

This is essential. Buy or die.

The Criterion Collection: Fanny and Alexander
Director: Ingmar Bergman (Sweden)
by Joshua Chaplinsky

The best boutique label around delivers the definitive release of one of my all-time favorite films, Fanny and Alexander. For those who complain about the cold detachment in much of Bergman's work (dumb people), this is the director's feel-good family flick. Sure, there's patriarchal death, a physically abusive priest, a weird androgynous Jew who is kept locked away, and a morbidly obese woman who gets burned alive, but it's all so very heartwarming in tone.

The Criterion Collection does their usual bang-up job (whatever that means). First of all, you get a beautiful hi-def transfer, which accentuates the vibrancy and the bleakness of the production design, as well as the masterful cinematography of the great Sven Nykvist. For completist's sake you get both the three-hour theatrical version and the five-hour television version of the film. Then there's the usual bevy of Criterion extras, including the feature length making of doc that Bergman shot concurrent with the film itself! Sure, all this stuff was on the DVD that Criterion released a few years ago, but this is the future we're living in. Discriminating film-buffs demand only the best. So if you love this film as much as I do, there wasn't a better Blu-ray release all year (but the Criterion Blu of Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy does comes close.)

Vamp (USA)
Director Richard Wenk
by Charles Webb

Thanks to Josh Hurtado's wonderful Blu-ray announcements and reviews, Arrow Video (previously not on my radar) has become a semi-regular drain on my wallet with their masterful restoration of genre films from the past. While a lot of Arrow's effort has been towards Italian horror masterpieces (or at least well-regarded works) like Inferno or Bay of Blood, Richard Wenk's mid-80's horror-comedy was an unexpected deviation from their typical release. Not only is Vamp a movie I hold great affection for with its college comedy gone awry vibe, but Arrow's disc is chock full of retrospective material about the film. Hopefully, the visual tune-up and load of extras on the disc will invite fans of the film or those curious about just who Grace Jones is and was to check Vamp out.

Miscellaneous
by James Marsh

Call this a cheat if you must, but rather than single out one release, I will simply list out ten bluray releases for which I have been most thankful in 2011:

Battle of Algiers (Criterion)
Blow Out (Criterion)
The Great White Silence (BFI)
The Killing (Criterion)
The Lavender Hill Mob (Optimum Vintage Classics)
Pale Flower (Criterion)
The Phantom of the Opera (Park Circus)
Silent Running (Masters of Cinema)
Taxi Driver (Sony Pictures)
Touch of Evil (Masters of Cinema)