Every month, so many movies are released on Blu-ray, you could go broke trying to own them all. Even if you limit to movies you like, you could easily get carried away between the new releases and re-issues of classics. So we at CraveOnline are trying to help narrow it down, and we’re still being pretty liberal. We’re going to do our best to narrow it down to the 10 “must buy” Blu-rays every month, and we reserve the right to go up to 11 or 12 if necessary.
Related: Watch an Exclusive Clip from the ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ Blu-ray
Narrowing it down to 10 for September was already tough, considering the release of Ghostbusters 1 & 2 (the sequel’s first time on Blu-ray), the Godzilla remake and Halloween: The Complete Collection, all of which we reviewed in full. One of those made this list but I couldn’t quite see calling Ghostbusters a must buy when so much of it has been released before, and we’re surely do for yet another reissue when Ghostbusters 3 finally happens.
The rest, for your purchasing pleasure, please consider CraveOnline’s Top 10 Blu-rays of September.
Slideshow: The Top 10 Blu-rays of September 2014
Also Recommended from September:
Leprechaun: The Complete Movie Collection
Saw: The Complete Movie Collection
Pumpkinhead
The People Under the Stairs
Once Upon a Time in America
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
The 10 Must-Buy Blu-rays of September 2014
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The fan favorite Marvel sequel is sure to be on everyone’s shelf already, and it looks perfect on Blu-ray. I’d expect there’s a more extensive special edition planned, but the brief bonus features on this release have a nice personable tone, giving us a sense of Anthony Mackie’s personality and those international Easter eggs in Cap’s notebook.
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: 40th Anniversary
I did not get a chance to see the new 4K restoration transfer theatrically, even when it played SXSW, but it looks amazing on Blu-ray. You can still see the grain and that locked-in-time color palette of 16mm film. Some shots are eerily clear, with full detail in the gory bodies and the haunting beauty of the Texas landscape, but it will always have that grimy aura of something you’re not supposed to be watching. They’ve kept all the previously released bonus features and added a few new ones too. Since many of the cast and crew are interviewed individually, it creates an oral history of Chainsaw, to go along with all the extensive documenting of it as well.
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Halloween: The Complete Collection
It might have been enough to just wrangle all the Halloween sequel rights into one collection, but Scream Factory and Anchor Bay didn’t stop there. Restoring the Producer’s Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was like putting out a brand new Halloween film on Blu-ray, and they loaded the middle sequels with all new extras. My personal favorite was the Jamie Lee Curtis audio commentary on Halloween H2O.
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South Park: The complete 17th Season
I’ve always enjoyed the “South Park” DVDs with Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s mini-commentaries, and since the show’s gone high-def, the Blu-rays keep getting better. This season has an amazing menu screen with the “Game of Thrones” wiener song, and the longest, most in-depth mini-commentaries yet. Now they’ve added tweets from the official @SouthPark twitter as another option, and the simplicity of the animation puts all the visual emphasis on the colorful cutouts.
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The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology
I haven’t been able to get my hands on this collection yet but it seems like the Blu-ray debuts of sequels Exorcist II: The Heretic and Exorcist III: Legion alone are cause celebre. Though II is oft maligned, sequels should always be included for reference and perspective, and III is actually well regarded. I can’t spin either version of IV but see my comment about the importance of including sequels no matter what.
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Transformers: Age of Extinction
It seems 50/50 whether people need to own the latest Transformers movie. I made my case and the Blu-ray backs me up. Age of Extinction is another Home Theater Demo quality epic with frames overloaded with detailed characters, backgrounds and destruction. I wish the Blu-ray had the IMAX version, but that Michael Bay shot looking up at the Hong Kong apartment building still captures the scale in widescreen Blu-ray. Extensive bonus features also capture all the different elements Bay uses to capture these elaborate action scenes, including a nice focus on the black ops guy getting punched in the face with a car tire!
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Neighbors
Neighbors cracked me up when I saw it at SXSW and now it looks great on Blu-ray, with a perfect picture and a colorful glow coming out of the Delta Psi Beta house. I’m not embarrassed to say that Zac Efron’s chiseled physique was made for high definition either. There’s even more funny stuff in the bonus features with deleted scenes and alternate lines that genuinely cracked me up as much as the stuff in the movie. That’s not usually the case with deleted scenes, so they were really on fire on the set of Neighbors.
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Ghost in the Shell: 25th Anniversary
The landmark cyberpunk anime movie has actually never been on Blu-ray before, though all its sequels and TV spinoffs have. So Franchise Fred says complete your collection with the original. The Blu-ray is a flawless transfer that manages to maintain the look of animation cells printed on film. Detailed backgrounds of future cities, modern era marketplaces and cyber warehouses exemplify the art of Ghost in the Shell. I do have to question the math of the anniversary though. Wasn’t this released in 1995?
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The Rover
Earlier this summer, a cool little post-apocalyptic thriller came to theaters immediately after its Cannes Film Festival premiere. Now I can tell you the Blu-ray for The Rover has everything going for it in HD. The picture is 100% clear to present the stark Australian aftermath landscape, and the detail is fine to emphasize every grain of dirt and the explosive gore of the violence. The film divides people, but the Blu-ray transfer won’t.
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Cold in July
Since Sundance in January we’ve been telling you about this cool crime caper. If you haven’t taken our advice yet, give it a shot on Blu-ray. The transfer holds up well for all the dark nighttime crime scenes, and classic cars shine in the 1988 period piece. Added bonus on the Blu-ray, you can hear George R.R. Martin himself ask author Joe Lansdale some questions at a Q&A for the film!
