A look at some of my favorite home video releases of this past year.
As physical media continues to hold onto its place in the home viewing market with all its might, it’s still proving itself to be the area to go for cinephiles who crave that level of specific film viewing, which the streaming services aren’t typically able to provide. It hasn’t been the easiest year for physical media as streaming continues to loom even larger than before, and boutique labels such as Shout! Factory are folding. However, there are those labels, the champions of the home video concept, who not only refuse to go anywhere, but are continuing to find new titles to re-discover while taking the discs themselves to even greater levels. Simply put, they’re the key film preservationists of our time.
In honor of physical media and its continued value in the lives of cinephiles, here are my top 5 releases of the year, each one a worthy entry on anyone’s shelf.
1. Corpse Bride– Warner Home Video
Despite earning Tim Burton his first Oscar nomination, this 2005 tale still feels somewhat unheralded. It’s a shame for this dark love story that deals with a nervous groom (Johnny Depp) who finds himself accidentally married to a recently deceased young woman (Helena Bonham Carter) just before his wedding. Corpse Bride plays on so many of Burton’s strengths, not least of all his love for stop-motion animation, which he lifts to sheer perfection here in all its macabre glory. Twenty years since the film’s release, its themes of romance, dark comedy, and even the fear of love, all show Burton’s sensitive side. For a filmmaker known for his twists on classic, well-known properties, Corpse Bride is a reminder of the original places his unique imagination can travel to.
2. Nightmare Alley– The Criterion Collection
Expectations were high among those within the film noir world when it was announced that Guillermo del Toro was going to be remaking this 1947 genre classic. Fans needn’t have worried. The legendary filmmaker’s interpretation of a drifter (Bradley Cooper), who goes from carnival worker to high-class con artist, was a visually sumptuous feast that was buoyed by an eclectic and well-cast group of actors. Beyond just amazing visuals (as well as the slightly dreamlike world of the 1940s that they bring to life) and stellar performances, del Toro’s reading of Nightmare Alley not only retains its noir feel, but also hones in on the tragedy of the story. The result is a film that mixes notions of fate, chance, and destiny in a tale about one man’s quest to outrun all of them.
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls– Kino Lorber
Epics rarely get more epic than they do with For Whom the Bell Tolls. The 1943 adaptation of the celebrated Ernest Hemingway novel tells the story of an American soldier (Gary Cooper) who falls in love with a young guerrilla named Maria (Ingrid Bergman) during the Spanish Civil War. A story filled with grand-scale filmmaking and emotional moments ripe with tension and passion, For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway at his purest. The film received a slew of Oscar nominations and was one of the top hits of the year. While there have been numerous versions floating around since the film’s debut, Kino’s release beautifully contains the restored 168 minute version in a collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive. All these years later, the film remains as lush, explosive, and romantic an experience as it’s always been.
4. The Naked Gun– Paramount
Director Akiva Shaffer’s take on the classic spoof parody series shouldn’t have worked. After all, it had been years since anyone had been able to successfully revive the genre to the level that this beloved trio of films had back in the 80s and 90s. But an incredibly clever script, and a more than game cast, including leads Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, brought fans back to the genre’s glory days with one side-splitting joke after another. The story of a big city lieutenant (Neeson) out to keep the streets clean is just as fruitful of a premise as its always been, from a comedy perspective. A never-ending assortment of coffee, a scatting Anderson, a hilarious police cam sequence, and even a cameo from original Naked Gun star Priscilla Presley, this fresh take literally has it all.
5. Airport: The Complete 4-Film Collection– Kino Lorber
No film series has gone through more of an evolution (or de-evolution, depending on who you ask) than the Airport movies. The plot is the same for each of these four installments. Some life-threatening obstacle is about to befall passengers aboard an aircraft of some sort, and it’s up to them and the people on the ground to do whatever it takes in order to try and avoid disaster. If the series was short on original stories, it wasn’t on stars. Everyone from Dean Martin to Gloria Swanson to Jimmy Stewart to Olivia DeHavilland all turn up in one sequel or another, with each one committing to the material. The quality of the four Airports range from genuinely tense to flat-out insane. Yet the common thread between all of them is the spirit of the disaster movie and the unadulterated joy its always brought to audiences.
