Long before his incarnations as Mr. Bean or his turn as Father Gerald in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Rowan Atkinson shot to stardom as a succession of conniving yet inept Blackadder men who bumble their way through British history under the illusion of crafty ambition (“I have a cunning plan…” inevitably leads to disaster, or at least acute embarrassment). The first series, broadcast on the BBC in 1983, was co-written by Atkinson and Richard Curtis (who later wrote -- surprise -- Four Weddings and a Funeral); Ben Elton was brought in to spell Atkinson for the subsequent seasons. The program was so popular that the original six episodes were followed two years later by a half-dozen more set in Elizabethan England. “Blackadder the Third” was made in 1987 and set in the late 18^th Century, while 1989’s clutch of six, “Blackadder Goes Forth,” took place in the trenches of World War One. Available in the United States for years on a seemingly endless series of videocassettes, the sturdy and stylish new BBC DVD collection, distributed by Warner Bros., collects all twenty-four half-hour episodes on five discs (do the math). The generous supplements include all three separate TV specials created through the years, the rare fifteen-minute Oliver Cromwell-era episode, the 1999 time-travel reunion “Blackadder Back and Forth” and its seventeen-minute production featurette. Additionally, there’s an invaluable reference work called “Historical Footnotes,” a half-hour interview with Curtis, a singalong to the catchy title song, and a who’s who of the cast and writers narrated by the one and only Tony Robinson, who played Blackadder’s long-suffering servant Baldrick. Technically, the video transfer is just OK, but it’s the content that counts here.  Incredibly, the region one “Black Adder” boxed set precedes the British edition by a good four or five months, with the region 2 set not due until November. Consumers willing to take the economic plunge are urged to invest in the boxed set over the individual seasons, thereby saving a chunk of change. Although it sure helps, you don’t need to know your English history to appreciate “Black Adder”, along with the now-available “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and the hotly-anticipated “Fawlty Towers” set (see below), its secure in its place among the crown jewels of British comedy.

By 1933, the stellar career of 38-year-old comedian Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton was for all practical purposes over, the genius of such groundbreaking and beloved silent triumphs as Sherlock Jr., Seven Chances and the immortal The General eclipsed by poor business decisions, drink and the advent of sound. This sad historical fact is the inspiration behind “Keaton Plus,” an eye-opening new bonus disc available exclusively with the purchase of the essential 11-volume Kino on Video box set. The box itself has been available for a couple of years now, and collects Keaton’s 11 features and a selection of 19 short subjects in one place. “Keaton Plus” charts the Great Stone Face’s determination to work, presenting him in such varied material as short films (including the newly-discovered 1921 gem Hard Luck), “This is Your Life,” home movies, short-lived television vehicles, educational short films and commercials (“Simon Pure -- The Happier, Hoppier Beer”). Orson Welles cites “the extraordinary beauty of Keaton’s face” in a series of 1970s-era introductions filmed by the likes of Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish for TV revivals of his work. Alas, neither the Samuel Beckett-authored 22-minute 1965 comeback vehicle Film or Keaton’s various big-screen cameos (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Beach Blanket Bingo) made the cut -- rights challenges, undoubtedly -- but a 32-minute fragment of the never-completed 1962 musical Ten Girls Ago is here, along with Keaton’s first dramatic role for television (“The Awakening,” from 1954). At nearly four hours, “Keaton Plus” is a goldmine, and the box itself is not only essential viewing but a cornerstone of any comprehensive DVD collection.

The central conceit of the Die Hard franchise is that New York detective John McLane (Bruce Willis) is a magnet for trouble, from a bunch of thieves masquerading as well-dressed terrorists to a Christmas holiday airport crisis and a criminal mastermind out for revenge. By the time Willis made the first installment of this groundbreaking big-budget Hollywood action series -- easily as important to moviegoers’ box office preferences in the 1980s as Jaws had been in the 1970s -- the star had already made two high-profile missteps in his move from television’s popular “Moonlighting” program to the big screen, Blind Date and Sunset (both directed by Blake Edwards and both instantly forgettable). But with its combination of precision filmmaking, courtesy of director John McTiernan, and its almost improvisational approach to the high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse played within a Los Angeles skyscraper on Christmas Eve, Die Hard was a fast-paced original: a witty, violent riff on that Hollywood mainstay, the caper movie, that actually had something new to say about greed, pluck and suspense. Renny Harlin’s underrated middle title is a bit too long but contains some terrific action set-pieces of its own, while McTiernan’s return to the franchise is highlighted by the tense but very funny interplay between Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. The eye-catching six-disc box set from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment endows each disc with a plethora of extras, including director commentary tracks (McTiernan and production designer Jackson De Govia compare the original to everything from Shakespeare to Stanislavsky), deleted scenes, production featurettes and even the ability to re-edit selected sequences. And of course the films themselves are restored to the diamond-hard letterboxed crispness of the originals.

Among the psycho killers, rogue cops, terrorists and assorted lowlifes in and around San Francisco, dedicated but defiant cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) dispenses justice on his own terms. Usually mentioned in the same breath as such pivotal landmarks of screen violence as Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry enters the new millennium as a virtual blueprint for the urban cop thriller. The film was famously assailed as a “right-wing fantasy” by critic Pauline Kael in 1971, but in truth the success of the franchise seemed to tap into a certain helplessness and discontent felt during a time of social upheaval. Seen today the series parodies itself with defiant wit after the second installment (which was written by Michael Cimino and John Milius), as if Eastwood himself grew tired of the whole concept but was unwilling or unable to walk away from such a lucrative franchise (and why 1984’s dark and provocative Tightrope wasn’t retooled as a series entry remains a mystery to this day). Warner Bros. has done a remarkable job of restoring each title; Bruce Surtees’ widescreen lensing of the original has never looked better, and Lalo Schifrin’s jazzy, concussive score, while strongly imitating the composer’s own work for the “Mission: Impossible” television program, mixes jazz fusion and what was then called “hard rock” elements in inventive ways. Only the first three titles have any extra material, and most of that is vintage production reels. But the Dirty Harry disc itself features a a very witty half-hour overview of the franchise from director Jerry Hogrewe in which Robert Urich (a featured player in Magnum Force) postulates on “What it All Means” (“one man and one very large gun,” he says almost wistfully) as a parade of participants behind and in front of the camera relate their experiences working with Clint (no, Jim Carrey, who plays a wigged-out rock star in The Dead Pool, doesn’t make an appearance). Scored, for some reason, to Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” it’s one of the freshest and most irreverent tribute docs of its kind. Each film is available separately or in this reasonably priced box. Not part of the set but worth seeking out is the new Warners release Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, filmmaker Bruce Ricker’s American Masters/BBC documentary on the actor-director’s long and storied career.

A key figure in the annals of European art cinema, Copenhagen-born filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968) began writing intertitles and scripts in 1912 and made his first movie six years later. From the beginning his films were a unique blend of documentary-like realism and an almost palpable spirituality, a synergy perhaps most apparent in his monumental 1927 drama The Passion of Joan of Arc. Now, courtesy of the visionary DVD distributor The Criterion Collection, three of Dreyer’s key films and an insightful posthumous documentary on the filmmaker and his methods are available to the consumer. Day of Wrath was filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, and its story of fear in the face of repression resonates with allegory. Perhaps a delayed reaction to his own unhappy childhood, Ordet is generally considered to be Dreyer’s towering achievement, a cold, clear look at the eternal conflict between organized religion and private beliefs set against the tensions between two rural families. Gertrud was Dreyer’s final film, and stars Nina Pens Rode as a woman who leaves her husband in search of emotional fulfillment. All of the titles look splendid, and the generous extras include detailed essays and a thick booklet accompanying the documentary (outtakes from which supplement each feature). Available individually or as the set, these are challenging films whose rewards become apparent only after contemplation, an important addition to any collection of world cinema. Criterion also offers a 1999 pressing of The Passion of Joan of Arc, a film with such a troubled history of neglect that the current restoration is nothing short of a miracle.

Back in Moscow in 1936 after the emotionally exhausting collapse of the Qué Viva México! project (Kino on Video’s new DVD of the reconstructed film was reviewed in the April column), director Sergei Eisenstein suffered further indignities when his first sound film, Bezhin Meadow (1935-1937) -- indeed, his first work since 1929’s The Old and the New -- was derailed by the director’s illness and a perceived violation of the Socialist Realism party line. By the time his assignment to the historical epic Alexander Nevsky rolled around, Eisenstein was in dire need of the Russian version of a box office hit. Operatic in scale and vivid in its thirty-minute ice battle, Nevsky delivered with its “symphonic structure” of the thirteenth-century hero’s repelling of a German invasion, set to a stirring score by long-time collaborator Sergei Prokofiev. Sailing into his final film on the wave of that success, Eisenstein once again became bogged down by health problems and official censorship in a mammoth, three-part biography of sixteenth-century Russian unifier Czar Ivan IV. Ivan the Terrible: Part I was a great popular success, part two was rushed and disliked by Stalin, and part three was never finished; Eisenstein died of a heart attack on February 11, 1948-19 days after his fiftieth birthday. Remedying the availability of numerous inferior video and DVD copies over the years, The Criterion Collection has finally delivered its long-promised “Eisenstein: The Sound Years” three-disc boxed set, and it was worth the wait. Both transfers were created on a high-definition Spirit Datacine from new 35mm composite fine-grain master positives struck expressly for the imprint by Mosfilm, and each enclosed brochure is built around an essay by critic J. Hoberman. The Nevsky disc features a first-rate commentary by film scholar David Bordwell, a restoration demonstration, the reconstructed Bezhin Meadow and more. The Ivan the Terrible discs include deleted scenes, two multimedia essays by noted scholars and an electronic portfolio of production stills and drawings. A building block in the collection of any serious cineaste, “Eisenstein: The Sound Years” is a DVD set to watch, learn from and live with. Note to Criterion completists: as per their catalogue, the boxed set itself is #86 in the series, Alexander Nevsky is #87 and the two-disc Ivan the Terrible set is #88.

If there exists a more laugh-out-loud funny and unrelentingly inventive example of emotional dysfunction than John Cleese’s immortal creation, the petty and perpetually distressed British innkeeper Basil Fawlty, such a creature has yet to achieve the cult status of this much-cherished television series (recently voted by the Brits themselves as the best program they’ve ever made). Finally collected on three discs, the mere twelve produced episodes of “Fawlty Towers” look better than they ever did on whichever public television station you first saw them on or their previous incarnation on VHS tape. The Warners/BBC Video set includes interviews with series regulars Cleese, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs (but not, mysteriously, with Cleese’s ex-wife and co-writer Connie Booth); a mere ninety seconds of outtakes; a dryly funny documentary explaining the real-life inspiration for Basil at an existing hotel in the seaside resort town of Torquay; cast info; thematic assemblages of comic highlights (“How to Manage Your Staff” is one); and a few directors’ commentary tracks from John Howard Davies and Bob Spiers that are funny in their own right but very poorly recorded. Entertainment Weekly has called the series “the Sistine Chapel of sitcoms,” an assessment that may sound hyperbolic but in fact nails the comedic craft and unfathomable influence of “Fawlty Towers.”

Gruff cop “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) breaks a French heroin ring after a daring series of cat-and-mouse games on the streets of New York City (The French Connection) and Marseilles (The French Connection II). The original French Connection was director William Friedkin’s first important movie, and it stands today as an innovative, propulsive and absorbing police procedural (cum groundbreaking car chase) that showcases the feral veracity of Hackman and the fluid, gritty camerawork of Owen Roizman (who went on to photograph Friedkin’s The Exorcist as well as the great 1970s caper movies Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three and the more politically-charged Three Days of the Condor). When The French Connection conquered some pretty long odds to win the Oscar for Best Picture, the victory signaled the arrival of the so-called “New Hollywood” movement of non-glossy, visceral stories. Unseen for many years in their proper aspect ratios, the films come in a sturdy box set from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Each feature is on one disc (French Connection II is apparently available only as part of the box), with a third disc of bonus material highlighting critic Mark Kermode’s terrific BBC documentary “Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing The French Connection” as well as seven murky but valuable deleted scenes available with or without Friedkin’s commentary. The revelation of the set is director John Frankenheimer’s 1975 sequel, which showcases Hackman’s acting chops (the sequence where he talks about baseball while kicking the heroin habit they’ve forced upon him is a career highlight) and the director’s own crisp style (Frankenheimer would return to that part of the world more than two decades later for the awesome Ronin). Each film also has a commentary track from the director, with Hackman and producer Robert Rosen present to speak about the sequel.
 

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The Godfather DVD Collection USA, 1971-90, Released 10.9.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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Francis Ford Coppola’s mammoth and storied history of the Corleone family is among the most cherished film franchises of the last half of the twentieth century. The Godfather made stars of Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall on its way to a Best Picture Oscar and a statue for Marlon Brando; the second installment earned Coppola Oscars for Best Picture, Director and adapted screenplay; and the third chapter remains his most ambitious and misunderstood work. Paramount’s sturdy five-disc box set doesn’t have a separate booklet, but each of the three films (Part II is on two discs) has a feature-length commentary from Coppola. Disc five contains over three hours of supplementary bonus material, including a Corleone family tree, historical timeline, storyboards, a documentary on the trilogy’s production, and additional scenes and outtakes comprised of select bits of connective tissue used over the years for various theatrical and television versions of the saga. While these last scenes are arranged chronologically, it’s a pity they can’t be integrated somehow into the films themselves. Then again, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see the complete Godfather saga make its way to DVD eventually, continuing the shifting history of this great American epic. If a copy can be located, Peter Biskind’s 1990 “Godfather Companion” book is an excellent reference source, more readily available but less penetrating in its analysis is Harlan Lebo’s 1997 tome “The Godfather Legacy.”

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Jazz USA, 2001, Released 1.2.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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“It’s more important than baseball,” “Take Five” composer Dave Brubeck enthuses about jazz and its impact on society, and from the context it isn’t entirely clear whether he’s referring to America’s national pastime and indigenous music or Ken Burns’ marathon take on each. No matter: at ten episodes with an average running time of nearly 107 minutes each (the first is shortest at eighty-six minutes and episode eight is the longest at 122 minutes), for a total running time of a whopping 1,066 minutes—well over seventeen hours—Jazz the movie is for all intents and purposes as important as jazz the music, tracing its New Orleans roots in the 1890s all the way up to today’s scene. Along the way there are thousands of film and video clips, interviews with various critics, writers and and performers (with Wynton Marsalis the most prominent and unabashedly enthusiastic) and, of course, the music: excerpts from 497 separate pieces, from the 1920s Jazz Age through big band to post-World War II bebop and even 1970s fusion. While some are arguing that the series dwells to long on the Swing Era of the late 1920s through the war at the expense of the last two decades, while others object to the omission of certain artists, the naysayers are missing the point: this wealth of detailed information, like democracy itself (to which jazz is often referred to as a symbol of), is focused yet messy, inclusive to a fault but by its very nature unable to take it all in. As such, the film is an invaluable tool not only as a history of the major players, but a way to clear up confusion over lesser-known but nonetheless important musicians, the Chick Webbs and Charlie Hadens who have either faded from memory or haven’t achieved the household-name status of the Duke or Satchmo or Bird or Dizzy. The Public Broadcasting Service has partnered with Warner Bros. for this handsome release, which comes on ten separate discs in a sturdy cardboard box. The booklet in disc one has a brief episode guide and details on the surprise extras, which include a sixteen-minute featurette “Making of Jazz” on disc one, Louis Armstrong’s complete 1933 Denmark performance of “I Cover the Waterfront” on disc two, Duke Ellington’s “C-Jam Blues” performed in a 1942 short called Jam Session, and Miles Davis performing the complete “New Rhumba” with Gil Evans conducting on a 1959 television program (the trumpeter’s earliest filmed appearance). Also worth mentioning is the velvety narration of actor Keith David (who may also be seen currently in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream), who brings just the right tones of urgency and soothing to the material. But the key feature of the set, and one that elevates it to must-own status, is the music information mode, whereby the viewer can choose to have each piece of music discreetly identified in the lower left-hand corner during play. Click on the title, and a screen showing detailed information on the song is displayed while the film is running. Thus it is possible to develop a pleasing rhythm of clicking on songs as they go by, enriching the total experience in true multimedia fashion. On the downside, viewers who wish to watch the DVD on their computers must put up with the annoying PC Friendly program, which installs itself with barely a warning and is apparently the only software under which it will run. Strike your own blow for freedom by deleting the program immediately after viewing. In all, this set is the sweet lowdown on a vital musical heritage much in need of the spotlight; to paraphrase the movie itself, “above all, Jazz swings.”

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Stanley Kubrick Collection USA/UK, 1962-2001, Released 6.12.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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Controversial even from beyond the grave, director Stanley Kubrick sparked a firestorm shortly after he died when a seven-disc collection of his films, from 1962’s Lolita through 1987’s Full Metal Jacket, were given the boxed set DVD treatment in a package apparently approved by the director but generally considered to be technically substandard (mono sound, improper aspect ratios). Nearly two years later to the day, this updated package, dubbed the “new” Stanley Kubrick collection, rights many of those wrongs and is thus essential for the collector. Yet in the process, it raises questions new and old regarding just how the consumer should want, or be expected to, duplicate the movie theater experience in the private home (not to mention the wishes of the artist). The answers are entirely dependant upon individual taste, which means that this nine-disc set will for many replace 1999’s collection, but for others it will supplement the set. The unqualified good news is that there are two more discs in the box, with 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut and producer/brother-in-law Jan Harlan’s splendidly thorough and exclusive new documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (which is also popping up on cable) joining Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket. The picture quality is excellent overall, with the greatest improvement apparent in the recently-restored 2001 (now presented in anamorphic widescreen), Barry Lyndon, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket (considered to be by far the worst-looking trio in the first box). But the audio questions are thornier. It’s common knowledge that Kubrick had demandingly high standards for theatrical presentation of his films, sending advance teams to check light levels and sound system quality in advance of first-run engagements—this is why 2001 was the only picture he made in stereo. Now, under the supervision of long-time personal assistant and technical advisor Leon Vitali, all features save Lolita, Dr. Strangelove (which is otherwise identical to the version released earlier this year by Columbia TriStar, extras and all), 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut have been given their first-ever Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mixes. Sonically, the results are very impressive—but they’re not the mono tracks Kubrick created with the films. While not a criticism, consumers should be aware that the version of A Clockwork Orange, for instance, they’ll be hearing through their home system isn’t the sonic force that Kubrick insisted be played to distortion in cinemas to further agitate moviegoers. This is a pedantic difference, to be sure, and one that is more than made up for by the luminous new picture quality (beefs about the lack of extras on five of the eight films are just that, beefs: extras are a privilege, not a right). The point is that cost aside, each box has its value in the collection of any serious film fan. With the release of Steven Spielberg’s difficult yet important A.I. Artificial Intelligence sure to thrust the director and his oeuvre back into the public eye (Kubrick apparently bequeathed the property to Spielberg), Warners  picked a very good time to issue a very good and very important boxed set.

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The Simpsons: The Complete First Season USA, 1989-90, Released 9.25.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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Simply put, how does “The Simpsons” get away with its relentless social satire? Now that Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has embarked on a program to release each of the ten seasons intact on DVD and video, fans and newcomers alike can chart the progress of the characters Matt Groening improvised on the spot prior to a pitch session with producer James L. Brooks ‘way back in the 1980s. Although still very much a work in progress, the inaugural season already features the audacious writing that endures to this day as the hallmark of the series. All thirteen episodes are included on the set’s three discs, with annotation provided in an eight-page brochure. Extras include Groening’s commentary on all episodes; original scripts; examples from foreign-language versions of the show (pity they didn’t include the very good Czech voicings); the very first Simpsons short aired on “The Tracey Ullman Show” and publicity odds and ends. But the two very best reasons to own this box set are Albert Brooks’ hysterically funny unused vocal session riffs from the “Life on the Fast Lane” episode (as that bowling alley Lothario who woos Marge) and an equally loony commentary track for an early, very primitive and thankfully unaired version of “Some Enchanted Evening” -- during which Brooks walks out of the session in mock (?) disgust. At presstime various news sources were reporting that season two will street in May 2002, and that Fox now plans to release a new season in box set form every six months or so. At that rate fans should be all caught up with television’s best satire by 2012 or so.

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The Sopranos: The Complete Second Seasons USA, 2000, Released 11.6.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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The right television program at the right time, David Chase’s “The Sopranos” is a near-perfect blend of melodrama and contemporary insight, set against the complicated professional machinations and volatile home life of a clutch of New Jersey wiseguys. Following up and improving on the season one box set, season two introduces Aida Turturro as the devious ex-hippie sister of series focus Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and David Proval as the reptilian made man Richie Aprile. This is also the season that featured the tragic story arc of informant Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore). Once again, what’s perhaps most noteworthy about the program is the cinematic quality of it all: presented in the vastly superior letterboxed format, the show looks for all intents and purposes like the best American movie of 2000 that never played in a theater. Credit creator Chase with not only a narrative vision (the filming of season four was delayed until every episode was written to his satisfaction), but having the necessary tenacity to film the show on location with superior production values. It’s a series that stands up splendidly to repeated viewings. The sturdy HBO Home Video release features all thirteen episodes from season two on four DVDs, supplemented with two featurettes, weblinks, and one director commentary on discs one, three and four from series regulars Tim Van Patten, Henry J. Bronchtein and Allen Coulter.

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Weekend Stories: Volumes 1-4 Opowiesci weekendowe Poland, 1996, Released 10.23.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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There’s a calm, measured mundanity to acclaimed Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi’s “Weekend Stories,” an eight-hour Polish television anthology suffused with insight and inevitably compared to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “The Decalogue.” Like the Kieslowski work, “Weekend Stories” has an overlapping structure: each of the eight hour-long moral dramas is set over a single weekend, some share the same settings and music and, tellingly, each begins with a shot through a window. Zanussi was a physicist before he became a filmmaker, and he recently told interviewer Ray Privett that “physics teaches you some modesty, because you are always in front of a huge mystery. All that we can explain is such a tiny fraction of all that we cannot explain.” Thus, each episode has an air of unknowable mystery and inevitability informed by recent, tumultuous events in Poland: a middle-aged woman ponders the path her life might have taken if she hadn’t had her passport revoked as a teenager; parents wrestle over the moral questions of their son’s possible leukemia; a chauffeur and a businesswoman square off; an aging ballet dancer is confronted with difficult memories upon his return to Poland for a charity performance (an episode based on Zanussi’s conversations with exiled Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev). Remarkably, Zanussi has survived within the Polish film and television community despite being critical of previous, repressive regimes. It’s a tribute to his practical wisdom that such deeply despairing stories can be so moving, and contain an emotional resonance virtually unknown in American television production. Available exclusively in a four-tape VHS box set, “Weekend Stories” is a joint release of Polart Video and Facets Multimedia.

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If the above sets prove too pricey, recent two-disc editions of note that belong in any serious collection of important films include Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura; Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; David Fincher’s Se7en; Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man; Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca; Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus; David Lean’s Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia; Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing; Guy Ritchie’s Snatch; Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (region 2 only); Ridley Scott’s Hannibal; Kevin Smith’s Dogma; Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel; Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane; and Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away.

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