Quality films on Blu-ray

[Jun-Dai]

The pace of Blu-ray releases seems to be slowly accelerating, and I'm having an increasingly difficult time keeping my eye on what comes out.

Unfortunately, despite the flood of releases of Hollywood blockbusters, Hollywood failures, modern indies, TV shows, anime, obscure (to me) opera productions, music titles, more anime, I find myself having a hard time keeping track of what's coming out that would actually be somewhat interesting to me. Quite frankly, the availability of quality films in region A seems to be quite anemic, and Criterion easily represents the majority of what I want to watch that's out on Blu-ray here.

My question is three-fold really:
* What interesting films are out on Blu-ray (region A) that are not on Criterion?
* Who (if anyone) is releasing interesting titles on Blu-ray (region A) other than Criterion? Kino seems to have given up?
* Are there any sites that keep track of interesting films coming out on Blu-ray?

With DVD there's so much out there that I can just think of films I want to see and there's a reasonable chance it'll be available. With Blu-ray it seems to like almost nothing is unless Criterion put it out.

Sorry to keep this so me-centric. That's just the problem statement, but if anyone else is having similar problems, or has had similar problems and solved them, I'd be curious to know about it. Maybe the answer is that I should just keep waiting for Criterion to do their thing, the majors to keep churning out old Academy winners, and just hope that eventually others will start to trickle in?

Just to give you some idea, these are the only non-CC films on Blu-ray that I could find to put on my Netflix queue:
* The African Queen (never got around to seeing it.
* Mad Detective
* A Bridge too Far (is this film any good?)
* Snatch (ditto)
* Kramer vs. Kramer
* Dog Day Afternoon
* Patton
* The Fountain
* Gran Torino
* Deliverance
* How the West Was Won
* Ballast
* Red Cliff
* Gigi
* Flags of our Fathers
* One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
* Rio Bravo
* The Dirty Dozen
* Oldboy

As you can see, that's a little excessively heavy on recent films or old Hollywood blockbusters, but it's all I could come up with after a few hours of scouring Netflix. Of course if I hadn't seen all of Kubrick's films, that's be a great source of films to watch, but what I really want is some good noir, postwar European, classic Japanese, silent, etc., films. That kind of thing. As far as I can tell, unless you have access to MoC, BFI, etc., Criterion is a bit of an oasis in a desert of HD offerings. Even MoC and BFI only add a modest number of titles to the mix.

Is it just too early for the format? Am I hoping for too much that within the next couple of years there will be enough great titles coming out on Blu-ray that I'll simply be swamped with titles to watch instead of digging around looking for things that I might have a slight interest in?

Sorry for the rant. I'm just a little tired and a little drunk, and depressed at the slowness of home video. I want to watch 8 1/2 in 4K already, and I can't even watch Renoir in 1080p.

[carax09]

and I can't even watch Renoir in 1080p.

You can, though! The new(ish) French Cancan disc is playable worldwide, and is as soul-stirringly beautiful as one could've hoped.

[mteller]

In Cold Blood
The Maltese Falcon
The General
Battleship Potemkin
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
An American in Paris
North by Northwest

[matrixschmatrix]

The Ladykillers
Heat
The Host
Steamboat Bill, Jr
The Dollars Trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad the Ugly)
Secret of the Kells (just came out, amazing like the dickens)
This is Spinal Tap
The Searchers
Being There
Stop Making Sense

There is sort of a paucity of noir on blu, isn't there? There's The Maltese Falcon, which just came out, and the Third Man, which only sort of counts, and... what?

[zedz]

This could be a very useful thread. I'm also dismayed when I click through pages and pages of a "Massive BluRay Sale!!" on some website and can only come up with a couple of films of any interest.

Kino's Fallen Angels and Happy Together should be on the list, and don't underestimate BFI's incredible HD catalogue, the majority of which are not region coded. The Bill Douglas Trilogy and Comrades are top of the heap and the Kenneth Anger set also belongs in any comprehensive collection.

Other stuff I've ended up with includes:
the UK Herzog box ("Encounters in the Natural World" or somesuch)
The White Ribbon - absolutely phenomenal image, as Haneke was shooting digitally to evoke the pin-sharp early photography of August Sander rather than any particular cinematic antecedent
Hou's Dust in the Wind
various Pixars
Zodiac
Pinocchio - the general range of Disney extras are predictably unedifying, but this features some fantastic animation, with the final sea-based twenty minutes perhaps the greatest animation feat of all time.

[colinr0380]

I know this is a Region A request thread but zedz I thought you might like to know that apparently Optimum in the UK is releasing both versions of the Assayas Carlos film on Blu in a couple of weeks.

[domino harvey]

For older films, try this, every pre-mid-1960s Blu-ray ClassicFlix carries

[Finch]

Re silents: Kino and MoC aside, don't forget the upcoming Borzage Blus (Seventh Heaven, Street Angel & Lucky Star) from France in November (I believe Carlotta is putting these out so these should be English-friendly; the only catch is that these may be Region B-locked).

[Jeff]

This thread at Home Theater Forum catalogs every pre-90s Region A Blu-ray by decade.

[Jun-Dai]

Kino's Fallen Angels and Happy Together should be on the list

I'd written my post mostly complaining about the lack of interesting films on Blu-ray that I hadn't seen, but now that this has turned into the much more generally useful thread about quality films on Blu-ray in general, you're right these are definitely worth mentioning (I don't own many movies, but I bought both of these). What's sad, though, is that after an initial mini-burst of titles, I get the sense that Kino stopped doing Blu-rays?

Hou's Dust in the Wind

Holy @#$@!, HHH has a film on Blu-ray? Man, did I miss that one.

This thread has made me much happier, even if I feel like the answer is to just wait it out and see what comes. That said, it seems a bit sad that CC would have a near-monopoly on great films on Blu-ray in the US.

[knives]

Kino's Fallen Angels and Happy Together should be on the list

I'd written my post mostly complaining about the lack of interesting films on Blu-ray that I hadn't seen, but now that this has turned into the much more generally useful thread about quality films on Blu-ray in general, you're right these are definitely worth mentioning (I don't own many movies, but I bought both of these). What's sad, though, is that after an initial mini-burst of titles, I get the sense that Kino stopped doing Blu-rays?

While it's not as quick as at first they're still doing a good number of titles. For example Sherlock Jr. and Three Times are coming out in about a month. For more about HHH here you go.

[Michael Kerpan]

If you are interested in FENG Xiaogang, there is a Blu-Ray of his very enjoyable If You Are the One.

[joshua]

While it's not as quick as at first they're still doing a good number of titles. For example Sherlock Jr. and Three Times are coming out in about a month. For more about HHH here you go.

Man you had me giddy there for a minute. I though Hou's Three Times was coming out on Blu from Kino but then I remembered that it was an IFC title on DVD. I'm guessing you were thinking about Three Ages but had Hou on the brain no?

[fiddlesticks]

* A Bridge too Far (is this film any good?)

No, it is not. Operation Market Garden is an interesting story, and Cornelius Ryan's book is, if not particularly well-written, at least much more thorough than the mostly superficial movie treatment. But it's worth seeing at least once to enjoy the shameless over-the-top performances from the likes of Elliott Gould, Edward Fox, and Gene Hackman. It's also fun from a "oh look, there's __________, I didn't know s/he was in this movie too" standpoint.

[MichaelB]

These BFI Blu-rays aren't region-coded:

BFI Flipside (cult British rarities)

All the Right Noises (Gerry O'Hara, 1970)
Bronco Bullfrog (Barney Platts-Mills, 1969)
Herostratus (Don Levy, 1967)
London in the Raw (Arnold Louis Miller, 1964)
Man of Violence/The Big Switch (aka Strip Poker) (Pete Walker, 1968/70)
The Party's Over (Guy Hamilton, 1964)
Permissive (Lindsay Shonteff, 1970)
The Pleasure Girls (Gerry O'Hara, 1965)
Primitive London (Arnold Louis Miller, 1965)
That Kind of Girl (Gerry O'Hara, 1963)

(NB: Most Flipside releases are region-free, but The Bed-Sitting Room, Privilege and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush are Region B for contractual reasons)

Avant-Garde

Anti-Clock (Jack Bond, 1980)
GAZWRX - The Films of Jeff Keen
Magick Lantern Cycle (Kenneth Anger)
The Other Side of the Underneath (Jane Arden, 1972)
Separation (Jack Bond, 1967)

British Films

The Bill Douglas Trilogy (1972-78)
Comrades (Bill Douglas, 1986)
The Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)
Institute Benjamenta (Quay Brothers, 1995)
Loving Memory (Tony Scott, 1970)
Nighthawks (Ron Peck, 1978)
Winstanley (Kevin Brownlow, 1975)
A Zed and Two Noughts (Peter Greenaway, 1985)

The Adelphi Collection

Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary/My Wife's Lodger (Maurice Elvey, 1952/53)
Penny Points to Paradise/Let's Go Crazy (Tony Young/Alan Cullimore, both 1951)

(All future Adelphi releases will also be region-free)

[Jun-Dai]

These BFI Blu-rays aren't region-coded

That's quite a list. Much bigger than I'd realized. Though to be honest the only titles I've heard of are Institute, Zed, and Kenneth Anger. It seems I have a lot to look forward to when I move to London next year!

[atcolomb]

Paramount released a Region 2 blu-ray of Cy Endfield's ZULU (1964) which to me is still the best looking blu-ray i have seen and i have close to 140 blu-ray movies in my collection. It's region free and not too expensive at Amazon.com.uk.

[mikkelmark]

I also have the Zulu blu-ray, but I think of it just the opposite. It is a bad example of DNR. If you look at some of the close up of the faces from screenshots they look like oil paintings, or as my non tech savvy brother noticed when we watched it:"They sure use a lot of makeup".

[stwrt]

Zulu looked very sharp to me, though I have noticed that the heavy make-up is sometimes mistaken for DNR.

[eerik]

So they used make-up on sky, landscape, buildings, clothes, etc.? Zulu is one of the worst heaviest DNR jobs I've soon on a Blu-ray release.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

It's definitely DNRed, but hail to the new king

[Oedipax]

It's definitely DNRed, but hail to the new king

Wow. That's the most excessive DNR job I've ever seen. It looks like they processed the whole movie through a Photoshop filter on low quality.

[zedz]

It's definitely DNRed, but hail to the new king

Wow. That's the most excessive DNR job I've ever seen. It looks like they processed the whole movie through a Photoshop filter on low quality.

You should see the caps from the French World on a Wire BluRay MacPaint edition!

[davebert]

Secret of the Kells (just came out, amazing like the dickens)

Hooray! Glad you liked it, and the recommendation is seconded!

[richast2]

Secret of the Kells (just came out, amazing like the dickens)

Hooray! Glad you liked it, and the recommendation is seconded!

agreed--it looks glorious on blu ray.