If you glance over to the right of the main page on this site you’ll see that I’ve added a new category of posts — Essential Blu-rays.
Posts in this category are short reviews of the Blu-ray editions of movies I consider important — essential to any home collection of movies, worth buying a Blu-ray player to watch.
I’m an enthusiast of the Blu-ray format — it allows one to view movies at home in a quality only exceeded by the projection of good prints on a large screen in a theater, and they’re usually movies that one has little chance of seeing projected in a theater these days.
The popularity of the Blu-ray format has fallen short of expectations — people increasingly prefer to stream movies at home in far lower quality than the Blu-ray format makes possible. But there are many movies, and not just the great ones, which only reveal their true content, their true nature, in a high-quality presentation.
In the long run, the Blu-ray format may be doomed — relish it while you can.
Click on the images to enlarge.
I’ve seen many movies this year (so far the my favorite has been TROUBLE IN PARADISE, which is now in my top 10) but none have been more gorgeous than the Blu-ray of Hitchcock’s TO CATCH A THIEF. My TV is modest (under $500) and it still felt like I was staring out a window looking onto the French Riviera that I could crawl right through.
Yes — that Blu-ray of “To Catch A Thief’ is wonderful, not least because it represents such a major upgrade from the crappy DVD previously available.