As the calendar year comes to a close, movie list season has again arrived—even if this year the very sound of the word “list” sends shivers, inviting attention to the predictable disaster of the recently dropped Sight and Sound decennial poll of the “greatest films of all time.” (As we wrote, all too presciently, eight months ago: “I hear there was some talk of rebranding the entire enterprise the Taco BellTM Sight and Sound Survey of Well-Intentioned Film Lists.”)
This should be more fun—our annual Top Ten home video releases. As y’all know (or should remember) this is not so much a list our favorite movies newly available in 2022, but rather reflects the “best of home video 2022”—and so it is skewed towards packages that offer valuable extras, and those that feature favored films previously hard to find or are otherwise obscure.
After several years with some spectacularly exceptional releases forcing us to rank order the list (an unseemly practice), this year marks a return to the graceful civility of listing in alphabetical order ten wonderful new issues:
Born to Win: This excellent, under-the-radar seventies film is finally getting the collectable release it has long deserved. The first U.S. film made by Czech New Wave notable Ivan Passer somehow fell between the cracks in 1971—even though it compares very favorably with The Panic on Needle Park the similarly-themed Al Pacino eye-opener from the same year. Passer thought his film’s “blend of European and American sensibilities disoriented many critics at the time,” but it is indeed now properly “considered one of [his] best.” An outstanding George Segal, in a remarkable, off-brand performance, is well supported by Paula Prentiss, Ms. Karen Black, and marvelous New York City location work. All that, and an astonishing, indelibly 70s-film ending.
Double Indemnity: “I killed him for money, and for a woman. And I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman.” Billy Wilder’s third feature makes a claim for the greatest film noir ever made—and, at a minimum, the movie, co-written by Wilder with Raymond Chandler from the James M. Cain novella (which it vastly improves) set the template for the movement. With Fred McMurray, Barbara Stanwick and Edward G. Robinson, Double Indemnity is well described by Woody Allen as “Billy Wilder’s greatest film, practically anybody’s greatest film.” Now available in a loaded special edition from Criterion, which we discussed at length in Cineaste.
Drive My Car: A 2021 theatrical release, we’re putting down our marker here: years from now, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s film, based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, will be considered one of the great films of the 2020s. Yes it’s long. And slow. And it sets a new World Record for longest pre-title sequence. Nevertheless, we’re with critic Justin Chang: “Nearly every scene of this richly novelistic movie – which won the [Cannes Film Festival] screenplay prize – teems with ideas about grief and betrayal, the nature of acting, the possibility (and impossibility) of catharsis through art.” Try this as the second bill in a double feature with Vanya on 42nd Street.
Four Films by Claude Chabrol: As we have previously celebrated, Mid Century Cinema favorite Claude Chabrol thrived in an outstanding final decade of filmmaking (a relatively rare feat among the greats). Four of those features – The Swindle, The Color of Lies, Merci Pour Le Chocolat, and The Flower of Evil have been collected in a well-appointed box set by Arrow Home Video; the bundle includes short features about each entry, and, irresistibly, every disc comes with “select scene commentaries” by Chabrol himself. You can’t go wrong with any of these four, but Flower is quite special, and Color of Lies is a flat out masterpiece.
Raging Bull: One of the great films of the 1980s, with bravura contributions from director, co-writer, and star (Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, and Robert DeNiro)—not to mention cinematographer Michael Chapman, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and players Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty. This singular accomplishment gets the full Criterion treatment, complete with three separate audio commentaries featuring (almost) everybody. It all started when De Niro tossed a copy of Jake LaMotta’s memoir on Scorsese’s hospital bed. And then, via Ebert: Scorsese’s film “was voted in three polls as the greatest film of the decade, but when he was making it, he seriously wondered if it would ever be released: ‘We felt like we were making it for ourselves’ . . . Raging Bull became therapy and rebirth for the filmmaker.”
Round Midnight: One of our favorite films from one of our favorite filmmakers (Bertrand Tavernier). Not surprisingly, we’ve written about this one previously—and we don’t have much to add to that, but this spiffy special edition, boasting an on-set “making of” documentary by filmmaker Jean Achache, offers a good opportunity to cue up this treasure one more time.
The Swimmer: This daring and innovative early New Hollywood film, based on a short story by Jon Cheever, resurfaces in a welcome special edition. Adapted by Eleanor Perry and initially directed by Frank Perry, The Swimmer was then handed over to and partially re-shot by Sydney Pollack—among other intriguing changes, Billy Dee Williams and Barbara Loden were dropped and replaced. Highlighted by a vulnerable, magnetic performance by Burt Lancaster, this eerie, oddly compelling film might not quite add up, but it lingers in the mind.
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3: An enormously entertaining film and a real blast, Pelham captures – as well as any movie of the era – the essence of the Big Apple on the brink of bankruptcy in those gloriously disheveled mid-seventies. The spectacular cast includes Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Hector Elizondo, Martin Balsam and Jerry Stiller, and cinematographer Owen Roizman burnishes his stellar reputation for New York City location work. Yet another well-stocked special edition, this one from Kino-Lorber.
The Velvet Underground: Our most eagerly anticipated film of 2021 – and already available in an excellent special edition – Todd Haynes’s Velvet Underground doc did not disappoint. It leans a bit more towards the Cale end of the spectrum than we would have, but it’s not our movie. Who’s in this film? Better to ask who’s not in this film—but the incredible cast of characters includes Jonas Mekas (to whom the film is movingly dedicated), and Amy Taubin, Who. Was. There. I cried during this movie. Twice. Possibly because you had to be there.
Wim Wenders—A Collection: Last, but certainly not least, Curzan Film has surfaced with a twenty-two disc Wim Wenders retrospective, including a dozen 4K digital restorations, and, um, “Over 50 Special Features including exclusive interviews, deleted scenes, commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, music videos, original and restored theatrical trailers.” So there’s that. This won’t come cheap, but Wenders is one of our most thoughtful and ambitious contemporary filmmakers. We are especially fond of The American Friend, Wings of Desire, and, one of the truly great and singular films of the 1970s, Alice in the Cities.