Continuing the ‘Best of Warner Bros.’ collection, on Tuesday September 3rd, Warner Brothers will release one of the best 20 film collection sets to date with Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection Thrillers. If you are familiar with anything Warner Brothers related, you fully understand what type of package you’re in for with this one.
Without further delay, let’s get right into it.
What movies are packed in?
You can pick out about two films in this collection and feel justified with the purchase (maybe your wife/husband won’t feel justified, but look beyond their disgruntledness (not a word, by the way)), you get some great films. Here’s a complete list of what you should be looking forward to:
The Public Enemy (1931)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
North by Northwest (1959)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Lethal Weapon: Director’s Cut (1987/2000)
Batman (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
The Fugitive (1993)
Natural Born Killers: The Director’s Cut (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Seven (1995)
Heat (1995)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
American History X (1998)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Inception (2010)
The Town (2010)
Much like the musical release of the ‘Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection’, this one is comprised of the truly best films that came out of the studio in the thriller category. Of course, if you look at the years, apparently the 60s provided zero thrillers from WB (of course it was the time of make love, not war — hippies). Anyway, you get some solid films with The Public Enemy starring the immortal James Cagney all the way to The Town, which shows that Ben Affleck can be pretty damn intense (shut your pie holes, Batman haters — give the man a chance). There’s a lot here that you will be happy with at the end of the day.
With that said, my only caveat in the bunch is why The Shawshank Redemption is considered a thriller. I find it far more dramatic than I do ‘edge-of-your-seat’ type of thriller feeling. I’m thrilled it’s in this collection, as it deserves to be in the top 10 greatest films of all time, but I’m just baffled why it wasn’t shifted over to the drama category instead of thrillers. Is this a petty argument? Of course it is, but as a reviewer it has to be questioned. If you’ve seen the film then maybe you can make an argument that the end escape (spoiler) is thrilling, but for 90% of the film it’s mostly dramatic. Anyway, that’s my only complaint in the bunch, as I could just sit back and watch all these films for weekends upon weekends. They’re that good.
Individuals or Conforming?
I had this beef with the bunch last time around and apparently it has never been adjusted or resolved. There are discs in the collection that have been literally taken out from a multi-disc collection they originated from. The first disc you’ll encounter is Strangers on a Train, which clearly says ‘disc 1’ on the front. This means that there was a second disc that might have more features or maybe an alternate version of the film packed in. Granted, this collection does concentrate solely on the film, but still it shouldn’t be that blatantly obvious. Here are a the ‘disc 1’ discs in the collection:
Goodfellas
Natural Born Killers
Heat
Strangers on a Train
Dog Day Afternoon
There isn’t a lot, but still those are some solid films that should have a bit extra content with them (especially Heat and Goodfellas — what fantastic films).
This all comes back to my original complaint with the musical collection previously released in February, these discs need reprinting or rebranding to hide the obvious origin in which they started. The obvious reason is to hide these labels and let the consumer feel like this package wasn’t simply thrown together. The other reason is to make the consumer feel like they’ve got something special with these collections. Having a uniform disc print for these movies gives them some sort of special value that will carry over with their next Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection purchase. Trust me, uniform is better than individual in this category when it comes to selling your product. Sure it might cost you a few extra dollars, but keeping the consumer coming back for more is far more important in the long run.
Otherwise, they look as if they were just popped out of the boxes of the inventory left over in the DVD warehouse.
Added bonus
Most of the discs included have bonus features attached to them. As expected, the discs that came from a multi-disc set usually have commentary and trailers, but nothing else. More than likely the second disc of the set probably included the bulk of the special features. Again, reprinting the labels might visually less cheapen the film, as movie lovers this day and age expect more, regardless of movies included. With that said, the quality of movies you get with this collection certainly out weight the special feature omitted on some of the DVDs.
There are only a couple of films that have no special features included with them. They are as follows:
Seven
The Dark Knight
I believe the Dark Knight was originally released without special features the holiday season it came out. As for Seven, I think it was a conscious decision to negate the inclusion of the features, as the film might be ruined because of it (there’s a reason why Kevin Spacey’s name isn’t in the opening credits of the film either).
Despite the here/there with special features, the set comes to you in a very nice box that includes a nice little booklet explaining a bit about the films. It’s a nice addition to a very nice collection of films.