Dennis Lim: Best of 2009 list

Like most media industries, the DVD business remains in a slump, which is bad news for archival releases: Distributors are, for now, more likely to recycle old standbys than dig into the studio vaults for obscurities. Still, plenty of terrific titles made their DVD debuts in the last year, and the number of great films upgraded to Blu-ray is growing exponentially. Here’s a top 10 -- and then some -- of the year’s most rewarding offerings:

“AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa” (Criterion, $399). A beautifully packaged testament to the Japanese master’s titanic career that includes early rarities (“The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail”), paradigm-defining classics (“Rashomon”) and overlooked late works (“Dodes’ka-den”). For historical significance and entertainment value, hands down the boxed set of the year.

“Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (Criterion, $39.98). A 32-year-old masterpiece that Chantal Akerman directed when she was all of 25 finally arrives on DVD. A scrupulous three-hour drama about the daily routine of a widowed Brussels housewife, this quietly monumental film is ground zero for global art cinema as we know it today. After a period of neglect, Akerman is getting her due on DVD. Also released in 2009: Her haunting 1993 travelogue through the collapsed Soviet bloc, “From the East” (Icarus, $29.99), and coming up next month from Eclipse, a set of her ‘70s films.

“Gaumont Treasures” (Kino, $79.95) is at once startling and delightful to dip into amid the ongoing hoopla of decade-end summations. It’s a survey of the work produced at the French studio Gaumont, mostly from the previous century’s heady first decade, as the language of the medium was still being developed. Other silent-era highlights new to DVD: Kino’s superb Blu-ray edition of Buster Keaton’s Civil War comedy “The General” ($34.95) and “Miss Mend” (Flicker Alley, $39.95), a Soviet adventure serial, wildly popular in its day, that tweaks the conventions of its American counterparts.

“Zabriskie Point” (Warner, $19.97), “Fight Club: 10th Anniversary Edition” (20th Century Fox Blu-ray, $34.99). A pair of cult films about youthful violence and alienation, maligned upon release but now generational touchstones. “Zabriskie Point” (1970), Michelangelo Antonioni’s only American movie, captures the zombified malaise of the dying counterculture, while David Fincher’s “Fight Club” (1999) nails the apocalyptic anxiety of the pre-millennial moment.

Luis Buñuel’s Mexican period, often overshadowed by his later years in France, took a turn in the spotlight with the releases of two ‘60s classics -- the droll drawing-room comedy “The Exterminating Angel” (Criterion, $39.95) and the non-believer’s spiritual parable “Simon of the Desert” (Criterion, $24.95) -- and an intriguing curiosity from 1956, the willfully directionless adventure film “Death in the Garden” (Microcinema, $29.95).

“The Samuel Fuller Film Collection” ( Sony, $79.95), an eclectic tribute to American cinema’s great tabloid poet, brings together seven Columbia movies that Fuller directed or co-wrote, among them “The Crimson Kimono” (1959), still one of Hollywood’s most complex depictions of an interracial romance, and the 1949 romantic potboiler “Shockproof,” directed with panache to spare by then up-and-coming German émigré Douglas Sirk. Another notable early Sirk film, 1944’s “Summer Storm” (VCI, $14.99), a Chekhov story updated to pre-revolutionary Russia, made its way to DVD this year.

“The Exiles” (Milestone, $29.99). Kent MacKenzie’s neorealist portrait of an invisible community -- relocated Native Americans in Bunker Hill in the late ‘50s -- is a poetic and provocative blend of fiction and documentary. One of the most evocative Los Angeles movies of all time.

“The Steve Coogan Collection” ( BBC, $129.98), “The Mel Brooks Collection” (20th Century Fox Blu-ray, $139.99). The comedy sets of the year: Coogan’s rounds up the various alter-egos he created as British TV’s reigning master of mortification; Brooks’ includes spiffed-up versions of such vulgar nostalgia staples as “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein.”

“The Prisoner: The Complete Series” (A&E Blu-ray, $99.95), ” Lost: The Complete Fifth Season” ( ABC, standard definition and Blu-ray, various editions, $59.99-$134). High-concept serial television at its most enigmatic and addictive, then and now.

The Blu-ray leap. For cinephiles who have yet to plunge into the new format, this is as good a time as any, given the recent crop of releases and the falling price of players. Criterion, a relatively late entrant to the Blu-ray market, continues to polish the building blocks of the art-film canon, with high-definition editions of Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Wenders’ “Wings of Desire” (all $39.95). War- ner also unveiled decked-out anniversary editions, featuring pristine remastered versions, of two 1939 war horses, “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind” (both $84.99).

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