Jason Bailey
I started writing an annual holiday gift guide for cinephiles over a decade ago, first for Flavorwire and then for The Playlist, for the simple reason that movie geeks are hard to shop for. If you’re not totally looped in on new releases (as we are) then you may not know what’s fresh to the market and what’s been knocking around forever; if you’re not hooked in to the nerd world, you may not be aware of weird little knick knacks that might not have even made it to our wish lists. So with that in mind, I present to you some of the year’s best box sets, books, discs, and more—just click on any bold-faced item to grab it and go.
BOX SETS:
Shout Selects followed up their 2018 release of the initial adventures of Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) with Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Trilogy, a 4K upgrade that adds in 2020’s long-awaited third installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music. Shout is also releasing a new 4K edition of Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Collection in December—just in time for Christmas, and just in time for the release of the new (and wonderful) Netflix-produced Wallace & Gromit feature. This one includes their earlier Curse of the Were-Rabbit, as well as all four of their award-winning shorts and their ten Cracking Contraptions micro-shorts.
Horror and thriller fans will appreciate Paramount Scares Vol. 2, a random but wonderful collection that includes the varying likes of Breakdown, World War Z, Friday the 13th Part II (which some smart critics deem the highlight of the series) and Orphan: First Kill; it also comes with loads of good swag, making it especially gift-worthy. And then there’s the Rocky: Ultimate Knockout Collection, which tops Warner Bros.’ 4K set of the the first four Rocky movies last year by adding Rocky V and Rocky Balboa (including a new director’s cut of the latter) and correcting the A/V issues that gave the last set an immediate bad reputation. And while Universal has been releasing a steady stream of excellent Hitchcock 4K boxes, you can get the cream of that crop—along with the recently released North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief from rival studios—in Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection.
Further out on the fringes, Arrow Video’s six-disc Blu-ray set Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe collects all ten of the wildly off-the-wall mixtures of horror, thriller, dark comedy and winking eroticism that Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins made from 1964 to 2008. Arrow’s excellent The Project A Collection gives us glistening 4K restorations of 1983’s Project A and 1987’s Project A II—Jackie in his prime, giving us great action and great gags in equal proportion. Both are a blast, and this set is an essential purchase for any fans of Hong Kong action cinema in general, and of its master in particular. And their latest Blu-ray collection of martial arts classics from the Shaw Brothers studios, Shawscope Vol. 3, is a feast of fine wuxia epics, including the One-Armed Swordsman trilogy. Fans of Asian action will also want to pick up Radiance Films’ Shinobi, set, starring Raizo Ichikawa in a trilogy of ninja action epics: Band of Assassins, Revenge, and Resurrection. These are rousing adventure tales, crispy photographed and cleanly composed, with purposeful and precise camerawork, filled with thrilling set pieces.
Vinegar Syndrome’s Forgotten Gialli: Volume 7 continues their long-running collection of obscure Italian proto-slashers, this time including Mystere from director Carlo Vanzina, whose deliciously sleazy Nothing Underneath is a VS favorite; that film’s writer, Franco Ferrini, making his sole journey into the director’s chair with Sweets from a Stranger; and Piccio Raffanini’s Obsession: A Taste for Fear. Vinegar Syndrome also recently released the three-movie set Cruel Britannia, a collection of gripping British thrillers from the 1970s: Ted Hooker’s Crucible of Terror, Jack Cardiff’s Penny Gold, and Freddie Francis’s Craze. And Severin Films has just put out two excellent new Blu-ray collections: Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise And Fall Of The World’s Wildest Cinema And How It Influenced A Mixed-up Generation Of Weirdos And Misfits, a three-disc set which combines a new documentary about the notorious repertory film house in one of London’s sketchiest neighborhoods with two discs of additional shorts, interviews, and more; and Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood, a three-disc set which collects four of the even less reputable later features of the Glen or Glenda director.
Of course, Criterion gave us plenty of good boxes in 2024; my favorites are Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, collecting the French master’s quartet of quietly played but deftly executed romantic comedy/dramas from the ‘90s, and Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968-1978, which honors the first decade of the late, great filmmaker’s career with a nine-film, three-disc collection. The centerpiece, of course, is the recently-crowned best movie ever, her 1975 drama Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, but there’s much more to this set; I’m especially fond of her 1974 debut feature Je Tu Il Elle, a claustrophobic and intimate (she plays the leading role) meditation on sexuality and loneliness, and of her marvelous 1976 documentary News from Home, a moody and elegiac reflection on the years she spent in New York City.
Classic comedy fans will adore KL Studio Classics’ On the Road with Hope and Crosby box set, which includes all seven of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (and Dorothy Lamour) Road to… musical/comedies, filled with catchy songs, memorable comic bits, and quotable, meta-textual quips. And maybe it’s a cheat to include a TV box set here, but KL did us the service of complementing their earlier Columbo: The 1970s Blu-ray box with Columbo: The Return, collecting the 24 made-for-TV movies Peter Falk made when he returned to his signature character in 1989. They don’t quite match the originals, no, but they’re a lot of fun, and Falk and his guest stars are having a blast—especially Faye Dunaway, whose 1993 episode It’s All in the Game was Falk’s sole writing credit on the show.
BLU-RAYS AND 4Ks:
The single Blu-ray I’ve found myself recommending most this year, at least to weirdos like me, is AGFA and Something Weird Video’s Hey Folks! It’s the Intermission Time Video Party, which includes not only an ingeniously edited remix of the best bits from SW’s Hey Folks! It’s Intermission Time VHS compilations, which compiled hours of vintage drive-in bumpers, movie theater ads, and other bits of miscellanea; it also includes all six of those original compilations, adding up to a staggering 718 minutes of throwback fun — a real bargain for a certain type of film-obsessed weirdo (hi). AGFA also followed up its essential AGFA Horror Trailer Show disc from a couple of years back with another compilation of trailers, commercials, PSAs and onscreen ephemera, and The Cult of AGFA Trailer Show is another banger for us weirdos.
On the more serious side, there aren’t enough superlatives for Made In England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, from director David Hinton and executive producer/“presenter” (in the best British tradition) Martin Scorsese, who has spent his entire career advocating for filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and here comes off as a combination of professor, filmmaker, and fan, walking through the Powell and Pressburger filmography picture by picture, breaking down themes, narrative, technique, specific choices, and (most intriguing) the explicit connections to his own work. #TCMParty folks will also want to pick up Criterion’s long-overdue Blu-ray upgrade of Pandora’s Box, G.W. Pabst’s unforgettable inaugural collaboration with Louise Brooks, one of the greatest of all silent movies.
Criterion was really on a roll this year; some of my favorite of their recent releases included the spooky Val Lewton-produced double feature of I Walked with a Zombie / The Seventh Victim; their loving restoration (leap-frogging from DVD to 4K) of Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 farewell to the West, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; Paul Brickman’s Risky Business, finally getting its due as no ordinary teen movie; the Wachowskis’ 1996 stealing-from-the-mob caper picture with a lesbian-erotica twist, Bound; Albert Brooks’s magnificent debut feature, the prescient and hilarious Real Life; Gus Van Sant’s similarly ahead-of-its-time satire To Die For, with an all-time great Nicole Kidman performance; Michael Roemer’s bruising debut feature Nothing But a Man; and Nancy Savoca’s heart-wrenching Dogfight, which (along with KL’s Blu-ray releases of True Love and Household Saints) finally gave that overlooked filmmaker some overdue flowers. And among their previous releases that got the 4K bump, I’d heartily recommend Repo Man, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Blood Simple, and The Long Good Friday, with its unforgettable turn by Bob Hoskins.
A few more 4Ks for your consideration: A24’s electrifying disc for the Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme’s all-timer concert film, Stop Making Sense; KL Studio Classics’s magnificent presentation of Ealing Studios’ perfect crime comedy The Ladykillers; Lionsgate’s loving presentation of Francis Ford Coppola’s recut of his long-neglected and highly underrated One From the Heart: Reprise; KL Studio Classics’ 4K bump for Michael Ritchie’s deliciously depraved Prime Cut; Fun City Editions’ rescue operation for the 1983 regional revenge thriller Handgun (aka Deep in the Heart); Shout Factory’s 4K upgrades for Matinee, Joe Dante’s affectionate tribute to the huckster showman likes of William Castle and Kroger Babb, and the potent, Tarantino-boosted 1977 revenge-o-matic Rolling Thunder; Vinegar Syndrome Labs’s release of the delightful Western/whodunit hybrid 5 Card Stud; Arrow Video’s DVD-only purgatory rescue of Anthony Waller’s chilling Mute Witness; and the long, long, long-awaited HD debut of James Cameron’s marvelous The Abyss.
The new boutique label Cinématographe made quite a splash in this, their debut year; they have yet to put out a movie that wasn’t worth seeing, but I’d especially recommend their 4K releases of Robert Altman’s elegant Depression-era drama Thieves Like Us and the long-unavailable 1980 teen sex comedy Little Darlings, as well as the Blu-ray debut of perhaps the best of the 1990s indie neo-noirs, John Dahl’s Red Rock West. And Paramount is out here showing the legacy studios how to care for their libraries, thanks to their gorgeous 4K releases of not only the bonafide classics Chinatown (complete with bonus Two Jakes) and Once Upon a Time in the West, but a must-have 4K for the long-neglected, not-even-on-Blu-ray Scorsese low-key masterpiece Bringing Out the Dead.
BOOKS:
The best new film-related book I read this year — hell, the best new book about anything — was Carrie Courogen’s Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius, a meticulously researched and delightfully playful biography of the Heartbreak Kid director that approaches her inscrutability as a starting point (rather than a shrugging conclusion, as a lesser book might), and makes a strong case for her belated inclusion in the canon of New Hollywood auteurs. One must also run, don’t walk, to pick up a copy of Crooked Marquee contributor Abby Olcese’s Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies, which shines several great movies (most of them secular) through a religious prism with wise and often witty results.
Other great and recent film books include the perfect pair of Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film, Alonso Duralde’s exhaustive history of queer film and filmmakers, and Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema, in which Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay deep-dive into both explicit and implicit trans filmmaking; The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982, Chris Nashawaty’s crackling history of the summer that gave us E.T., Blade Runner, The Thing, Poltergeist, and more of the most influential movies of the decade (and beyond).
Another excellent pairing is Glenn Kenny’s entertaining and thought-provoking jaunt through Brian De Palma’s operatic gangster classic, The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, and De Palma scholar Laurent Bouzerau’s meticulous The de Palma Decade: Redefining Cinema with Doubles, Voyeurs, and Psychic Teens. Alexandra West’s Gore-Geous: Personal Essays on Beauty and Horror is a series of insightful essays on how genre movies see women, and the ways (good and bad) in which they can make women see themselves. Ilana Kaplan’s Nora Ephron at the Movies is a must for your fall coffee table, a beautifully designed combination of glorious photos and probing analysis of Ephron’s films and other writings. And finally, one cannot speak highly enough of My Affair with Art House Cinema, the great Phillip Lopate’s latest collection of essays and reviews, written with his signature grace and acumen. Any of these books will make a fine gift, so grab a few—and hey, while you’re at it, why not pre-order my latest?
APPAREL:
This is a new section, and may be too specialized — not all movie lovers want to wear Movie Lover Shit (TM). But I do, so I’ll start by recommending these wonderful “Filmmaker Shirts,” designed by writer and podcaster Brian Saur, who has elegantly pulled some of the best “directed by” credits for dozens of the most beloved directors (and writers, and producers, and actors). And since it’s a Tee Public shop, you can select your own color combinations. I own more of these than a middle-aged man probably should.
Also recommended on TeePublic: GiantGiant, which offers up clever movie-related and witty pop culture tees, including these hilarious actor and character bootleg-style shirts. The nice thing about TeePublic is that a) most of the money goes to the creator, and b) they’re always having sales. Like, every couple of weeks. They’re having one as I’m writing this. You’re welcome!
Socks are about the most boring articles of clothing we’ve got, so kudos to the folks at Jimmy Lion for working up some great-looking, fun to wear film-related footwear. I can personally vouch for their Hitchcock and Kubrick collections, but they also have gift packs for fans of Gremlins, The Goonies, and Spielberg, as well as for artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Frida Kahlo. And as long as we’re talking feet, I truly can’t believe I haven’t yet splurged on these VHS sneakers.
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
Of course, the gift that keeps on giving for the carnivorous cinephile is a streaming service subscription, and god knows there are so many of them that there’s bound to be one they don’t have. You can probably safely bypass Netflix, Prime, and Hulu, which it seems like everybody has (and whose pickings are increasingly slim), and probably Max too, what with its evil overlord and all. The best streaming service, at least for the movie geek, remains The Criterion Channel, though you’re running the risk there of doubling up, since it’s so widely recognized as the cinephile standard. Shudder is the must-have for horror heads, while Paramount+ and Peacock have surprisingly robust catalogues as well.
I’ve spent this year writing about some of the alternative streamers available to movie lovers who are looking beyond the usual offerings, and can highly recommend gift subs to MUBI, Kino Film Collection, Metrograph at Home, and OVID for art-house denizens, and Night Flight Plus, Cultpix, and Arrow for those who are looking for wilder offerings. And if you’re shopping for someone wise enough to use the free service Plex, be advised that they offer additional features via their paid “Plex Pass.”
And there you have it! There’s loads of great gifts out there, and tons of fun stuff to watch, so happy shopping.
