Focus Features 10-Movie Spotlight Collection [Blu-ray]

This is a quick way to beef up your collection of quality movies. Most of these earned major Oscar nominations and have very high critical ratings. Plus you also get a code that gives you digital copies of all ten movies. My discs and case arrived undamaged, but the slip of paper with the code for digital copies was for Universal's Blumhouse of Horrors 10-pack. I submitted a ticket to Universal on their redemption site and they sent me a new code which redeemed for these Focus movies (and I got to keep the horror movies in my digital collection). The problem with a set like this is if you already own some of them. I had two of them already, but one of those didn't include a digital copy, so for me it worked out.

These superb films from Focus Features, most of them award-winning and all of them critically acclaimed, are presented as a 10-Blu-ray box set with oodles of supplemental materials, including deleted and extended scenes, many making-of featurettes and background documentaries, commentary and interviews with writers and directors and their casts and crews, as well as a code that allows one to stream all of the movies online. If you appreciate artistic excellence and collect contemporary cinema, this is a compact and economical way to do it.Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (2004) is a fish-out-of-water story set in Tokyo, where a wry Bill Murray and a young Scarlett Johansson establish a unique and endearing relationship. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2005), a wonderfully strange Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry collaboration, features a remarkable cast lead by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as former lovers who can't forget one another no matter how hard they try. In Joe Wright's "Pride & Prejudice" (2005), Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen embody Jane Austen's classic romance, and in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" (2006), Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play cowboys in a forbidden relationship (though I personally can't imagine cheating on either Michelle Williams or Anne Hathaway).Another Wright film, "Atonement" (2007), stars Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, and Vanessa Redgrave in a wartime tale of tragic misunderstandings and regrets. It couldn't be more different from the Coen Brothers' "Burn After Reading" (2008), with Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and others; this hilarious black comedy concerns a pack of Washington D.C. numbskulls engaged in farcical skullduggery and deadly misadventure. Wes Anderson's quirky and delightfully deadpan fantasy "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012) features another terrific ensemble cast that includes Bruce Willis and Edward Norton along with Murray, McDormand, and Swinton.The remaining films are inspirational biopics about important figures from history, two of whom died recently: in James Marsh's "The Theory of Everything" (2014), Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones play theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife; in Mimi Leder's "On the Basis of Sex" (2018), Jones and Armie Hammer play Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her husband; and in "Harriet" (2019), Cynthia Erivo powerfully portrays abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Some folks find biographical films to be deadly dull, and I admit that many of them are, but these three are compelling and moving exceptions to the rule.The Spotlight Collection is a reasonably priced treasury -- currently costing less than $5 per disc -- that conveniently assembles some of the most memorable and prestigious motion pictures of the past two decades. These four comedies and six dramas reward repeated viewing, so if you don’t already have them on Blu-ray, I highly recommend the set.

While the contents remain intact, the box and plastic case were destroyed. I will keep the discs, try to rehouse them in separate cases but am disappointed in quality of delivery. The collection of movies themselves is magnificent. GREAT choice to collect in one package. LOVE Focus Film features. Always deliver quality work and wonder if thicker packaging can have protected the contents' outer shell.