Criterion Collection: Worth It?

December 28, 2004 3:16 PM

What is all the fuss about Criterion Collection DVD's, and why are they so expensive? I wanted to buy Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" today, but it was like $60CDN! Are they (as a whole) worth the money?
posted by Quartermass to media & arts (19 comments total)

yes yes yes!

They have a bazillion extras and I hear from people who care about picture quality that the transfers are great.

(Anyone who wants to send me the three disc set of Brazil with the whole movie recut to be happy as the studio wanted is most welcome to do so as my family utterly failed on the Xmas present front.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:22 PM on December 28, 2004

I agree completely with CL, Criterion is pretty much always worth the money. Their version of Seven Samurai, for example, has probably the best commentary track I've ever heard.
posted by Zonker at 3:26 PM on December 28, 2004

Yes: even if you don't care about the fantastic extras, the prints are incredible.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 3:27 PM on December 28, 2004

Yes. If you love film they are worth the money. If you are just idly curious about something, you may want to pass. Whenever there is an option, I go for the Criterion.

I used to work for a company that provided materials for Criterion and it was always a great pleasure to work with them. People who love movies are just good people.

/slight derail.
posted by FlamingBore at 3:30 PM on December 28, 2004

I have three. I want more.
posted by mcwetboy at 3:33 PM on December 28, 2004

Criterion makes great discs.

However, some of their earlier discs aren't as high-quality as they could be. For example, their early releases weren't released in anamorphic widescreen.

Still, they make tons of movies available that otherwise wouldn't be (in the US, at least).

Lots of discount retailers sell the Criterion discs for far under MSRP (MSRP is usually $40 or so, they can be had for about $30). This makes the price a good deal more reasonable.

If you're budget-minded, you could probably find a Hong Kong DVD of any Kurosawa film. Usually the HK discs are all-region, generally have English subtitles, and are very inexpensive ($10 or less, depending on the movie). Beware of bootlegs, though. (HiViZone seems to have Throne of Blood for $5.50! Shipping is higher, of course.)
posted by neckro23 at 3:48 PM on December 28, 2004

(by the way, all prices quoted above are USD. sorry!)
posted by neckro23 at 3:50 PM on December 28, 2004

I recently rented the Criterion DVD of The Seven Samurai and the commentary track was excellent. I watched the damn thing three times.
posted by gwint at 3:53 PM on December 28, 2004

I agree that Criterion makes excellent discs. However, many of their Kurosawa discs (Yojimbo, High and Low) are very bare-bones and still quite expensive. It might not be worth it to buy an expensive, bare-bones disc now when new formats are peeking over the horizon.
posted by selfnoise at 4:12 PM on December 28, 2004

The Criterion version of Life of Brian is similarly excellent, packed with extra features, commentary, and an hour-long BBC documentary. Well worth the money.
posted by Danelope at 4:32 PM on December 28, 2004

They are definitely worth it. Everyone should own By Brakhage.
posted by josh at 4:45 PM on December 28, 2004

Why buy just one?
posted by beowulf573 at 5:21 PM on December 28, 2004

These versions are definately better than any other version you would find. The price is not really worth it, though. Wait a year and the price might come down. They appear to have the Criterion version of "Throne of Blood" at www.zip.ca which is a DVD rent-by-mail site. I use a similar service (Netflix) in the US and it's definately the best method of renting movies.
posted by Yorrick at 5:48 PM on December 28, 2004

CD-Wow have the Criterion edition of Throne of Blood for 16 quid (about 38 Canadian Dollars) and deliver worldwide for free.
posted by John Shaft at 7:12 PM on December 28, 2004

Yes, they are worth it.

Dammit, dobbs should be all over this! Come back, dobbs!!
posted by languagehat at 7:26 PM on December 28, 2004

You can pretty much count on a Criterion edition of a DVD to be the best edition of that DVD that you can find.
posted by bingo at 8:59 PM on December 28, 2004

The quality of the film to DVD transfers is what makes the Criterion Collection DVD's so valuable. More importantly they have a close collaboration with the Janus Film library, which has many classic foreign - mainly European and Japanese - films.

When dealing with old films it is hard to get a good quality print. Criterion - along with Rialto Pictures and Janus - do the finest job of restoring these old films - with help, of course. Then they add on really nice extras, which are historical, unique, fact filled and fun - especially for DVD collectors.

Their price is somewhat high but that's because they don't have a major studio backing them nor as wide a release as the mainstream titles.

New Yorker, Image and Kino Video are simililary priced but none of them have as good a quality as Criterion.
posted by Rashomon at 10:16 PM on December 28, 2004

Haha, I suggest you don't wait too long for the price to drop. Stuff like that tends to go out of print before the price lowers.

The Disney DVD collections have been going the same way.
posted by Napierzaza at 10:29 PM on December 28, 2004

Yes, they're worth it. Criterion has been at this since the laserdisc days, and to us old LD folk there was never any question about the DVDs being top notch (although they were rather late to the anamorphic party). It's more than the quality of the transfer; yes, they're beyond merely meticulous about their telecine work, but they also locate the best available print, or in many cases have new, restored prints made. Early Criterion DVD titles have the occasional visible compression artifact, though certainly fewer than many other early DVD titles, but they very much have the hang of it now.

I'm not much into "extras," but I always appreciate a high quality print and transfer, and Criterion does that very, very well.

The Disney DVD collections have been going the same way.

Has Disney fixed their transfer problems yet? A lot of the titles I've seen -- older, certainly -- appeared to be straight recompressions from their low-quality oversaturated VHS masters. Disney laserdiscs were almost uniformly unwatchable, and they continued the tradition into the handful of DVDs I've seen.
posted by majick at 10:50 AM on December 29, 2004