Aaron Mook Eyes wide shut is his favorite movie of all time He watches 5 movies a week He refuses to watch Barry Lyndon
On one hand, that’s a fantastic introduction to the brand if you can afford it and never owned any of them before. On the other hand, I’m not sure who else this is for.
I mean you really have to be pretty new to collecting. I own half of those so I’m not going to be getting it. (I also like the individual discs tbh)
I’ve seen people suggest that schools and libraries could buy them since it could be used as an educational tool of sorts for film.
People could also sell the individual discs they already own in favor of saving some shelf space too to get some money back.
this would also probably be good for someone who's watched many of these digitally (i.e. Criterion Channel) or owned just a couple but wanted to own the equivalent of a Criterion "starter pack", although i think many would argue which films should and should go in that sort of collection. i did the math and depending on whether you're using the MSRP or Criterion's sale price, the cost rounds out to about $15-$20 per disc (excluding the book). seeing as that standard Blu-Rays usually go for $30-$40 on their site, you'd essentially be getting a 50% discount on 40 films (so during the half-off sales, that'd be even more). but $640/$800 is still really steep, even for beginners. it's a cool concept, but like everyone here said, it's probably for a really niche audience.
The lack of Kurosawa films in it is especially noticeable but perhaps it could be due to them potentially working on a separate Kurosawa set.