Best DVDs of 2005

Monsters, old-time gangsters and masterworks of world cinema are DVD tops

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM CRITIC
Wednesday, December 28, 2005

These are my favorite DVD releases of 2005, the ones that will stay on my shelves for a very long time:

1. "Naked" (Criterion, $39.95) — Mike Leigh's scabrous 1993 comedy of bad manners makes it to disc at last in a justly thorough Criterion edition. In a performance of startling originality, David Thewlis plays scuzzy vagabond Johnny, who shambles through the film spouting acid geysers of biblical doom and philosophical venom when he's not abusing women to feed his sick soul. Wicked wit and cruel sarcasm are the defense mechanisms of this roving raw nerve. Johnny is rotting inside and out, and he haunts scenes like a wounded wraith. The acting and writing in this disturbing character study make it one of the great movies of the 1990s.

2. "L'argent" (New Yorker, $29.95), "Pickpocket" (Criterion, $39.95) and "Au Hasard Balthazar" (Criterion, $39.95) — The films of Robert Bresson have been slow coming to DVD, but three of the late master of spiritual cinema's best arrived this year. "L'argent" (1983) is a moral crime story, miraculous in its compression of word and gesture. "Pickpocket" (1959), considered Bresson's zenith by many, follows a pickpocket on his rounds, describing moral conundrums worthy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A beaten and neglected mule stars in "Au Hasard Balthazar," a fable of such heartbreaking power, I will never watch it again. The Criterion releases get the usual lavish, collectible treatment.

3. "Andrzej Wajda — Three War Films": "A Generation," "Kanal" and "Ashes and Diamonds" (Criterion, $79.95) — Wajda's celebrated World War II trilogy shows the fighting from the Polish perspective, and gets a handsome presentation from Criterion. Resistance fighters play cat and mouse with Nazis in the dank Warsaw sewers in the intense "Kanal" (1947), while a hip resistance fighter turns assassin on the last day of the war in the darkly entertaining "Ashes and Diamonds" (1958). And youths come of age, facing love and duty, in "A Generation" (1955).

4. "King Kong: Two-Disc Special Edition" (Warner, $26.98) — Scads of informative, even exciting, extras come with this excellent restored version of the original giant-monster movie. While the technical achievements of the 1933 classic are obvious, the movie is itself stupendous. The creakiness of Kong's stop-motion animation lends the drama a tactile crunch, a material immediacy that's impossible to create by computer commands. With invaluable documentaries, the set features fun commentary by stop-motion magician Ray Harryhausen.

5. "The Warner Gangsters Collection": "The Public Enemy," "White Heat," "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Little Caesar," "The Petrified Forest," "The Roaring Twenties" (Warner, $68.98) — Before noir there was the gangster picture, scrappy, single-minded morality tales filled with tough talk and pistol smoke. Warner's canonical classics were mold-making and star-making, cementing the screen personas of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson — bad guys who talked funny — for decades. Having the titles bunched together demands a marathon dunk into black-and-white crime.

6. "Jerry Lewis — The Legendary Jerry Collection" (Paramount, $59.98) — The French are right — Jerry Lewis is a comic genius and visionary director. This box of 10 Lewis essentials reveals all. Watching the perfectionist Lewis' engineered goofing, it boggles to think how this stuff played in the late 1950s and early '60s. It's weird even after Jim Carrey's riffing on Lewis' limb-flailing, mouth-gaping lunacy. Lewis provides enlightening, if never comprehensive commentary on the films, which include "The Nutty Professor," "Cinderfella" and "The Disorderly Orderly."

7. "Masculin Feminin" (Criterion, $29.97) — Jean-Luc Godard, working in his raffish new wave phase, presents the educated youth of '60s Paris — "the children of Marx and Coca Cola" — as chatty, flighty, shiftless, idly ambitious characters. It's funny to see the kids — Jean-Pierre Léaud is one of them — profess great seriousness about life and ideas as their minds and hands wander intractably toward sex. With interviews, behind the scenes footage, a 16-page booklet and more of the goodies you expect from Criterion.

8. "Unknown Chaplin: The Master at Work" (A&E, $24.95) — Many film buffs who saw this 1986 documentary when it first aired on television have been itchily awaiting its return. Released without fanfare, the DVD is a blessing for Charlie Chaplin fans and anyone fascinated by the cinematic process. The crux is a collection of rare outtakes from Chaplin's movies, revealing his working methods, improvisations, perfectionism and self-criticism. Other rare footage from the Chaplin family vaults round it out. Mesmerizing.

9. "The Fly: Two-Disc Collector's Edition" (20th Century Fox, $19.98) — I've always thought "The Fly" was David Cronenberg's most perfectly realized film, and this package shows why it is. Through insightful commentary by the director and several documentaries, we learn how Cronenberg put his brainy stamp on the material and about the painstaking process of creating the disgusting special effects with full-sized puppets and plastic goo. (Computer animation was scarce in 1986.) If you like this masterpiece of horror and heartbreak, you'll appreciate it more discovering the smarts, sweat and slime that went into it.

10. "Point Blank" (Warner, $19.98) — Revenge and money fuel Lee Marvin after he's left for dead by his crime partner in this stylish neo-noir from 1967. Directed by John Boorman ("Deliverance"), it bristles to a fractured, flashbacky vibe and crackles with hostile wit. Forget everything else, including his turncoat wife — Marvin, an imposing noir antihero, just wants his money. Now. Includes commentary by Boorman and fan Steven Soderbergh, who pinched the film's agitated new-wave energy for "The Limey."

Also of note:

•"Night and the City" (Criterion, $39.95)

•"Detective Story" (Paramount, $14.98)

•"Looney Tunes — Golden Collection: Vol. 3" (Warner, $64.98)

•"BBC History of World War II" (BBC Warner, $149.98)

•"Ugetsu" (Criterion, $39.95)

•"Wages of Fear: Restored Edition" (Criterion, $39.95 — reissue)

•"The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3" (New Line, $89.98)

•"Ran" (Criterion, $39.95 — reissue)

•"Shoot the Piano Player" (Criterion, $39.95)

•"SCTV Vol. 4" (Shout Factory, $89.98)

•"Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry: Supercharger Edition" (Anchor Bay, $19.98)

•"Weekend" (New Yorker, $29.95)

•"Controversial Classics Collection": "Advise and Consent," "The Americanization of Emily," "Bad Day at Black Rock," "Blackboard Jungle," "A Face in the Crowd," "Fury," "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (Warner, $79.98)

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649