This is the time of year we play the “best of” game, here with a top ten of our favorite home video releases of 2020. What’s that you say? All video in 2020 is home video? Well, yes, but we’re limiting ourselves to what was released on DVD and/or Blu Ray. And, as always, recall that these are “best discs” not “best movies”—so although we very much value all the entries so honored, the list strongly favors editions that offer valuable extras, or those that make newly available films that had been generally unavailable or somehow obscure. Also as usual we present our selections in alphabetical order, because, as they say in Belle Sherman elementary school, it’s not a competition. And so here they are, our top ten:
The Complete Films of Agnes Varda. Ok, so we’re cheating here a bit, by filing this under A for Agnes. But in fact this is indisputably the home video release of the year—a packed set of fifteen Blu Rays (that’s a lot of content) covering, comprehensively, right down to commercials and experimental shorts, the spectacular, varied oeuvre of one the all-time greats. We have already paid tribute to her here, and have a feature discussing this set forthcoming in the summer—so start watching now!
Agnes Varda, honored during and after the 2019 New York Film Festival
Cisco Pike. Finally, a spiffy release for this significant seventies film obscurity, featuring great performances from legends Kris Kristofferson, Karen Black and Gene Hackman, who are joined by a party of favorites that includes Harry Dean Stanton and Roscoe Lee Browne. The debut feature of writer-director Bill Norton, then twenty-eight, surprisingly he would not scale these heights again. (Cisco really unravels at the end, but there’s enough here to leave one wishing to have seen more from this hand.)
Criss Cross. In 1946, Robert Siodmak released one of the greatest noirs ever made, The Killers, starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner and Edmond O’Brien, about a femme fatale and a heist gone horribly wrong. (It opens, famously, with a haunting scene inspired by the Hemingway short story.) Three years later, Siodmak reteamed with Lancaster, in this film noir about a femme fatale and a heist gone . . . well, do they ever go right? This time around Burt is accompanied by the reliable Yvonne De Carlo and Dan Duryea. It’s not as good as The Killers—but it’s damn good.
Fail Safe. Another movie overshadowed by an all-time-great. The reputation of Sidney Lumet’s picture has been somewhat obscured by Stanley Kubrick’s very similarly-themed Dr. Strangelove. But Lumet plays it straight, and Fail Safe is a helluva film, with a very strong cast that includes Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, and Fritz Weaver, effective tension throughout, and, excuse the pun, a killer ending.
Four Films by Krzystof Kieslowski. Ok then . . . regular readers of Mid Century Cinema know that we revere Mr. K, who is responsible for a number of stunning masterpieces including Red and The Dekalog (and speaking of Kubrick, he was a huge fan of the latter). Most of Kieslowski’s early films have only been available in indifferent editions, but here are four of them – all must-sees – packaged in one well-appointed set. We are partial to Camera Buff, which hints irresistibly at autobiography and revels in infectious cinephilia.
Camera Buff: For Jerzy Stuhr, increasingly, all the world’s a movie
The Lady From Shanghai. You think? A Welles film, another studio-butchered masterpiece, and one that has never gotten the home-video release it deserves—until now. (Though we pine for the legendary forty-plus minutes of lost footage, still MIA.) Starring Welles, Evertt Sloane (that’s Mr. Bernstein to you) and Rita Hayworth, this release is packed with way-cool extras, including commentary by Peter Bogdanovich and an interview with biographer Simon Callow. But the sparkling restoration of this still-underappreciated classic, from the original negative, would have made this list in a bare-bones edition.
Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai
The Last Detail. Another seventies film gem long overdue for a special edition. Directed by Hal Ashby, written by Robert Towne, and shot by go-to Scorsese cinematographer Michael Chapman (his first film in the big chair), this Jack Nicholson vehicle (featuring Otis Young, Randy Quaid, and look for Carol Kane), has, as we like to say, something to say.
Max and the Junkmen. This is not up there with Claude Sautet’s greatest films, Classe Tous Risques (1960) and A Heart in Winter (1992). But Sautet, a mentor to Bertrand Tavernier, remains somewhat underappreciated, and his run of films in the 1970s, often featuring Romy Schneider and/or Michel Piccoli, can be hard to come by, especially in polished editions. (And actually his six films from that decade just cry out for a lavish box set.) Max is one of our favorites among those, and it is a pleasure to see it here in this fine new edition.
Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli in Max and the Junkmen
Puzzle of a Downfall Child. We were just talking about this one—featuring an outstanding Faye Dunaway (who everyone calls difficult, and perhaps that is so, but Gene Hackman routinely clashed with his directors and doesn’t have “notoriously difficult” attached as a prefix to his name), Puzzle was written by Carole (Five Easy Pieces) Eastman and directed by Jerry Schatzberg. Another one of those seventies films that had been only accessible in tattered or obscure editions—and that any fan of the decade should see.
Town Bloody Hall. Another entry we recently discussed, in this case extensively, and another underseen production—this one an absolute buried treasure, starring Norman Mailer and his enormous ego going toe to toe with a panel of feminist critics headlined by Germaine Greer, who steals the show. A night to remember (as they said of the Titanic)—this disc would be worth buying for the movie or the extras. Watch it all.
Germaine Greer is less than impressed in Town Bloody Hall