DVD Box Sets

If money is no object, you can't go wrong with this tremendous 50-disc collection of international films released by the Criterion Collection. Janus Films introduced American audiences to the pleasures of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Francois Truffaut. This unsurpassed box set includes a 200 page book that tells the story of Janus Films through an essay by film historian Peter Cowie, with a tribute from Martin Scorsese, and also extensive, all-new notes on all 50 films. The awe-inspiring selection of films includes such essential masterpieces as The Seventh Seal to Jules and Jim. This box set is more than a gift of a lifetime; it's an education.

It's impossible to talk about independent film without talking about John Cassavetes. The filmmaker, who worked outside of the Hollywood system long before it was hip, has been called a visionary and a genius, and has inspired generations of young American directors. The long-awaited DVD box set includes Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night in stunning new transfers, as well as Charles Kiselyak's 2000 documentary A Constant Forge: The Life and Art of John Cassavetes.

If you fall in love with a character, as I did with Antonine Doinel in Francois Truffaut's masterpiece The 400 Blows, then there is no greater treat than an entire series of films about him -- and they're all available in Criterion's extraordinary five-DVD box set. Truffaut's young hero is impulsive, defiant, romantic, idealistic, melancholic, and perhaps unintentionally, a world class comedian. It's possible to get lost in the spontaneous facial tics, gestures and outburst of actor Jean-Pierre Leaud.

Pedro Almodovar fans should go gaga over this fantastic nine disc, eight film collector's box set. From hilarious comedy to pitch perfect melodrama, Sony Pictures packages the best of Pedro in one spectacular box: Talk to Her, Bad Education, All About My Mother, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Live Flesh, Flower of My Secret, Matador, and Law of Desire.

If you like Jim Jarmusch, you'll love Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki. Proletariat Trilogy compiles Kaurismaki's early films Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl, available for the first time in the United States. These three films tell the stories of society's forgotten outcasts -- garbage men, coal miners and factory workers -- with both love and deadpan humor.

For the Lynch devotee, it doesn't get much better than the Lime Green Set. After the release of the tripped-out masterpiece Inland Empire and his book on consciousness and creativity Catching the Big Fish, writer, director and artist David Lynch has personally selected these works in this new box set, featuring 720 minutes of film stock, including many pieces new to DVD, and a "mystery disc" taken from Lynch's own personal archives. Highlights include a remastered version of Erasherhead, 32 deleted or extended scenes from Wild at Hearth, and a 40 page collector's picture book.

French filmmaker Andre Techine isn't a household name outside his native France -- which is, of course, our loss. A Techine film is sure to be smart, well plotted, and emotionally wrought (in the best possible way). This DVD box contains four of Techine's most memorable films. Catherine Deneuve stars in Hotel American and My Favorite Season, plus the classic coming-of-age film Wild Reeds and I Don't Kiss.

Yes, we know, David Simon's unparalleled television series isn't a film. Not an independent film, and not a foreign film, either. It is HBO. But that doesn't change the fact that the five seasons of The Wire set in the corrupt, crime ridden, impoverished city of Baltimore, offers some of the most intelligent, complex, and thought-provoking drama around. Be prepared for a massive binge that will take weeks and weeks out of your ordinary movie-filled life.