The Best 25 DVDs of the Year

Hey, DVD Buyer: Stop bitchin'. It's your market, baby. Hollywood needs you to make up for the beating it's taking at the box office. So it's getting movies to you faster, with the DVD typically appearing less than three months after a flick debuts at the multiplex. It's packing those discs with bonuses and souping up the sound and picture -- on classics and newbies -- so your home systems will purr. Here's the top of the 2006 crop.

#1: JAMES BOND: ULTIMATE EDITIONS VOL. 1, 2, 3, 4
With Daniel Craig reinventing 007 for a new generation in Casino Royale, the time is now to plunge into Bond history with MGM's just-out, all-inclusive, bonus-packed gift from tech-head heaven. Don't grumble. I know the Bond films have been available before, and you're as sick as I am of being told to buy them again because there's more extras and they look and sound better. But there really are more extras, dude, and with DTS 5.1 sound and frame-by-frame restoration from Lowry Digital, this is the best Bond you're going to go orgasmic for until they put implants in our brains and turn film-watching into virtual reality.

The twenty Bond movies -- there's no Never Say Never Again because Sean Connery did that 1983 remake of Thunderball as a rogue operation -- have been packed into four volumes. That's five movies in each volume, each film with a second disc brimming with extras. One pissy point: The films are out of chronological order. That means you can't just buy one volume with all the Connery films on it, or the Roger Moores, or the Pierce Brosnans. Timothy Dalton did only two films, and George Lazenby just one. But my total immersion in Bond taught me this: Connery is still king, Moore peaked with The Spy Who Loved Me, and Brosnan got better and grittier as he went along. It also taught me that Ian Fleming invented a character for the ages with this British agent.
HOT BONUS Impossible to choose, since there are so many stretched across forty discs. But hearing new audio commentary from Sir Roger Moore is a welcome touch of class.
KILLER SCENE That laser heading for Connery's crotch in Goldfinger, as 007 asks the villain (the great Gert Fr?be) if he expects him to talk. "No, Mr. Bond," he says with the most evil grin in the Bond canon, "I expect you to die."

#2: V FOR VENDETTA
This two-disc special edition does justice to this rarest of species: a futuristic film fantasy powered by ideas. Written by the Wachowski brothers, of Matrix fame, the film stars Hugo Weaving as V, an avenger in a Guy Fawkes mask who uses bombs, daggers and telegenic charm to take down a fear-mongering regime with parallels to Bush's. Natalie Portman excels as Evey, the work slave swept up by V's fervor.
HOT BONUS Portman's political commentary has surprising relevance and bite. And there's a savvy feature on Fawkes, the Catholic vigilante who futilely tried to blow up Parliament on November 5th, 1605.
KILLER SCENE On a rooftop, V raises his hands like a conductor and directs Evey to watch as the Old Bailey blows up and lights the night sky. It's V who set the bombs and vows to destroy Parliament in 2020.

#3: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
The year's biggest box-office smash may be silly and overlong, but it's also a kick and easier to watch on this double disc -- where you can hit pause -- than squirming in a theater seat. Johnny Depp remains a high-camp pleasure as Captain Jack Sparrow, but it's Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his watery crew who will pop your eyes and tickle your funny bone.
HOT BONUS A feature on the "Bloopers of the Caribbean" actually earns some big yuks.
KILLER SCENE A cannibal cookout (Jack is garlanded with a necklace of severed toes) and a duel on a giant wheel are both trumped by the mere sight of Davy, the squid-faced captain of the Flying Dutchman, who bargains for souls and who looks like something scraped off the bottom of an aquarium.

#4: REDS
Warren Beatty has been dragging his ass for years getting the film that won him an Oscar as 1981's Best Director ready for DVD. This two-disc package is worth the wait. It took balls for Beatty to win financing for a film in which he stars as John Reed, the American journalist whose involvement with communism drove him to Russia in 1917 to cover the Revolution. The love story between Reed and writer Louise Bryant (a superb Diane Keaton) drags down the film. But Beatty's passion is indisputable.
HOT BONUS Beatty, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and Jack Nicholson, who plays Eugene O'Neill, give a vivid inside view.
KILLER SCENE Beatty used interviews with Henry Miller, Rebecca West and other witnesses to the period to add resonance to his story. They're inspiring to watch.

#5: UNITED 93
It's not the technical pow of this DVD that makes it great, it's the emotion. Director Paul Greengrass takes a documentarylike approach to the events on 9/11 that made United 93 the fourth hijacked plane and the one that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when its passengers tried to fight against terrorists.
HOT BONUS The two-disc special edition includes a shattering feature in which the actors playing the doomed passengers visit with the families of the dead.
KILLER SCENE At the end, Greengrass imagines a sea of arms reaching into that cockpit in a way that redefines heroism. Far from being exploitative, the effect is inspiring. You can't watch it without thinking, "This is the best of us."