Third ActThe ten best Criterion releases to buy this year
Criterion put out an unusually strong slate this year, and an unusually expensive one — four of the ten releases below are over $40. Not all of them are worth that price for every collector. These ten are, and I've ranked them by something more useful than prestige: how often you'll actually take them back off the shelf.
How we chose
I buy most of what I review here with my own money, specifically so I have no reason to be generous about a weak transfer or a thin extras package. A release makes this list for three reasons: the restoration is a real upgrade over what you can stream, the extras justify owning a physical copy instead of renting the film for four dollars, and the film itself holds up to a second or third watch, because that's the actual test of whether a disc earns its spot.
The full list
- The Salt Years (1974, dir. Helena Voss) — 4K UHD, $44.99. A new restoration from the original camera negative that makes the desert-set back half look like a different, much better film than the DVD transfer most of us grew up with.
- Nightgate (1988, dir. Ruben Alsace) — Blu-ray box set, $49.99. Includes both the theatrical and the 1991 extended cut, plus a 40-minute making-of that's better than some full documentaries.
- Two Rivers (1965, dir. Noburo Ichikawa) — Blu-ray, $34.99. The commentary track from two of Ichikawa's former assistant directors is worth the price alone.
- Firebreak (1979, dir. Tomas Kessel) — Blu-ray, $37.99. A overdue restoration of a film that's been circulating in rough bootleg transfers for a decade.
- A Quiet Register (1991, dir. Odile Marchetti) — Blu-ray box set, $42.99. Pairs Marchetti's best-known film with a lesser-seen companion piece shot the same year with the same cast.
- Harvest Moon Drive-In (1983, dir. Gene Okafor) — Blu-ray, $32.99. Low-key the funniest commentary track of the year, recorded by three surviving cast members over lunch.
- The Long Ferry (1996, dir. Marit Solberg) — 4K UHD, $39.99. The sound mix restoration is the real headline; this is a film that was always about its soundscape and finally sounds like it.
- Winter Palace Blues (1970, dir. Costa Linden) — Blu-ray, $29.99. The cheapest disc on this list and still one of the best transfers of the year.
- Everyone Left the Party (2003, dir. Nadia Fontaine) — Blu-ray, $31.99. A 2000s indie that's aged better than almost anything else from that decade, now finally out of a muddy-looking streaming transfer.
- The Quarryman (1958, dir. Edvard Nilsson) — Blu-ray, $27.99. The most purely entertaining film on this list, full stop, and the cheapest besides Winter Palace Blues.
Three to buy first if money's tight
If you can't swing all ten this year — and at these prices, fair enough — start with The Quarryman, Winter Palace Blues, and Two Rivers. All three are under $35, all three hold up to repeat viewing better than most things released this decade, and all three make a genuinely strong case for owning physical media instead of relying on whichever service happens to be streaming them this month.
- The Quarryman — $27.99, the easiest recommendation on the entire list.
- Winter Palace Blues — $29.99, best transfer-to-price ratio of the year.
- Two Rivers — $34.99, buy it for the commentary track alone.
Two that almost made the list
A restoration of The Birchwood Letters (1987, dir. Anneke Sorbo) came close to cracking the top ten this year. The transfer is genuinely excellent, correcting a color-timing issue that's plagued every previous home release, but the extras package is thin for a $38.99 disc — a single twenty-minute retrospective interview and nothing else. It's worth owning if you already love the film; it's not worth $39 as an introduction to it.
The other near-miss is Coastline Requiem (2011, dir. Jonas Pryce), a 4K release at $41.99 that's technically flawless but arrived with almost no new supplemental material — Criterion reused the commentary track from a decade-old DVD release rather than commissioning anything new. Flawless image, recycled extras, and a price that assumes you're paying for both. If the film itself isn't already a favorite, the earlier Blu-ray at a lower price gets you most of what matters.
Where to buy
Prices above are list; all ten discs regularly go on sale, especially around quarterly site-wide promotions. A few places worth checking before you pay full price:
- Criterion's own store — frequent 50% off flash sales, usually announced with about a day's notice.
- Your local independent video shop — slower restocks, but often cheaper than list and worth supporting if you have one.
- Secondhand marketplaces — fine for older, out-of-print titles; check disc condition claims carefully before you buy.
If you're going to buy more than two or three of these, it's worth waiting for a sale rather than paying list price across the board — the gap between full price and sale price on this list can run $15 or more per disc.
What's coming next
Next year's slate is already shaping up to include a long-rumored restoration of Firebreak director Tomas Kessel's earlier, harder-to-find 1974 feature, plus at least one more Ichikawa box set. We'll cover both as soon as release dates and pricing are confirmed. For now, this list represents genuinely the best buying year Criterion has had in a while — expensive, but rarely wasteful.
