by Éireann Mannino, Contributor

2021 saw a beautiful succession of releases that seemed tailored to me personally and I experienced them as such, a cosmic manifestation of my wants. What follows are the key anecdotes of this most generous year that floated delight after delight downstream to me.

Throw Down (Yau doh lung fu bong, dir. Johnnie To, 2004)

It would be difficult to assign so many firsts to one film as I am able to with Throw Down. It was the first of Johnnie To’s films I had the pleasure of seeing (on the big screen no less), and it kickstarted one of the most enduring loyalties of my cinephilia. It was also the first film I saw at a festival. It’s whimsy set the bedrock of my festival going thereafter. What’s more, Throw Down became the first disc I ever bought online, having used a friend’s eBay account to track down the Honk Kong DVD, which felt terribly modern of me at the time. I needed to ensure that Throw Down would always be there, that I could solidify my relationship to it, that I could make it a pillar of my then quite modest collection.

Since that first fateful viewing in 2004 at the Ritz East, none of Throw Down’s charm has been lost, none of its warmth, sincerity, gusto or peculiarity has dissipated, none of its technique or tonality subdued. Throw Down is as vital now as it was then, as much (or more) of a love song written in movement, space and color as it ever was. 

Criterion picked this critical darling of To’s middle career, his most personal–and in the opinion of this reviewer, his flat out best–to finally induct the Hong Kong master into the collection. One hopes that it is merely the beginning. 

2020 saw a 4K restoration of Throw Down by UK-based distributor Eureka! Thankfully it was a matter of mere months before Criterion announced they would be giving Throw Down an equally elegant elevation in status. The saturated and moody coloration of Jeremy Enecio’s new cover sings the song of neon nightclub malaise that is Throw Down’s main stage. Enecio offers us a glimpse of the film’s qualities that are at once emphatic and enigmatic. The special features are minimal, but the over all design is so charming, the painterly images of the cover and interior poster so evocative of the film’s playfulness, the essay by Sean Gilman so enlightening, and the sheen of the 4K transfer so exhilarating for a long-time fan of the film, one would be hard pressed to say anything sideways at this edition. I for one, feel like it is winking at me.

Pension Metsä (ペンションメッツァ, dir. Kana Matsumoto, 2021)

It’s not every year you encounter a new favorite filmmaker, much less one that really sticks, but 2021 was just such a year for me. I love big, so I made a mission of gathering up every last scrap of Japanese filmmaker/writer Kana Matsumoto’s yet-modest oeuvre after seeing her first, Tokyo Oasis (2011). How it all started is unclear, but I found myself crushing on actor Satomi Kobayashi, and it so happens she is featured prominently in all of Matsumoto’s works, made for the big and small screen. Naturally this developed into the satisfaction of two crushes. Like many modern filmmakers, Matsumoto’s career has blossomed in collaboration with streaming services like WoWoW and Hulu Japan and I am all the more a beneficiary of that marriage.

Matsumoto’s warm and unhurried approach to the personal and interpersonal everyday of her characters, her focus on the hospitality endemic to Japanese culture, the care for objects and spaces, and the forging of found or chosen families feels like an inexhaustible milieu to recapitulate ad infinitum, making for appropriate comparisons to Ozu. That said, she endeavors into the lives of characters that Ozu never did, the entrepreneurial woman, the woman who forges her own meaningful path in a world where friendship, community and self reflection are made the primary kinds of relationships, not partnership. 

Matsumoto’s cinematic works Tokyo Oasis (2010) and Mother Water (2012), as well as her limited series Pan to Sûpu to Neko Biyori (2013), Côte D’azur N*10 (2017), lined my shelves one after the other in no time, each a treasure of clean and thoughtful design. All the while I was eagerly anticipating the release of her latest 9 episode series Pension Metsä, which she directed and wrote (and features my favorite duo Satomi Kobayashi and Masako Motoai). Matsumoto has such a keen sense of the air and light and it characterizes why I feel so calmly transported by her cinema, and particularly by Pension Metsä which takes place at a remote mountain villa run by Tenoko, which guests seem to happen upon as much as seek out.

In keeping with all of her disc media releases, the design for Pension Metsä is both elegant and playful, simple yet boisterous. The large photographic obi that would nearly classify as a slipcase is a standout design element, contrasted against the cardboard brown box. The title, written vertically in english and Japanese on the far left and right peripheries respectively in bold black is continuous onto the obi, which means there is a right and wrong way to orient it. I find myself trying to align it perfectly as if someone will be scrutinizing me. Where the outside feels manicured but still rustic, the inside is a splash of almost garish yellow. Wherein lies a sense of Matsumoto’s quiet mischief.  

Flowers of Shanghai and Cafe Lumiére (Dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien)

Another first for the Criterion Collection is the long anticipated, indeed bafflingly long overdue addition of Hou Hsiao-hsien to its prestigious ranks. How it took this long has no satisfying explanation, but anyway, it happened. All I can say is, more plz.

The new blu-ray edition is wonderful. The features, particularly the making-of documentary, are substantive and insightful. Victor Ngai’s design of the cover and booklet are evocative of the film’s play of light and its language of ornamentation and obfuscation, and the 4K transfer is a work of art unto itself. 

Medium framing, a subtly floating camera, dim but warm amber light, hazes of opium smoke, the density of gossip and unspoken rules, the play of fantasy coded as truth, interior upon interior upon interior with only a whisper or two of the outside world, ceaseless infighting and the play of power dynamics blend into one of the most exquisitely anaerobic cinematic worlds I have ever fallen under the spell of. 

By pure anecdote, 2021 brought me closer to another of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films, the lesser discussed and enthrallingly (for some, excruciatingly) understated 2003 film Cafe Lumiére, which happens to be my favorite of his still growing catalog and one of my favorite films period. What I hadn’t realized until I stumbled upon the Japanese edition of the DVD (alas it has yet to receive the honor of 1080p) is that an entire 30 minute sequence had been cleanly excised during the editing phase. Not featured on Wellspring Media’s 2005 DVD edition, I did what any sensible completist would do. I bought the unsubtitled 2004 Japanese edition to correct that egregious oversight. Was it worth it? Beyond estimation. Who doesn’t want to dive back into a world they love to discover an even greater abundance.

Ultraman 80, Ultraman Tiga, Ultraman Dyna, and Ultraman Gaia

2021 saw a continued effort from Mill Creek Entertainment to bring the full breadth of Tsuburaya Productions’ ULTRA Series to disc media for North American audiences, an effort that began in 2019 with the seminal Ultra ! and Ultraman classic series in Steelbook blu ray format (a format reserved for the classic line). Since then, my attention has been fairly occupied. Suffice it to say, that consuming these series at the rate of their release is tantamount to a part time job (unpaid internship).

The intimidating release schedule has taken a curious shape, beginning with tandem linear releases of the 2010’s and classic 60’s-70’s series. The initial slate of seven classic series (Ultra Q, Ultrama, Ultraseven, Return of Ultraman, Ultraman Taro, Ultraman Ace, Ultraman Taro, Ultraman Leo) concluded this year in May, giving way to Ultraman 80 and the subsequent 90’s era Ultra Series. 

It is worth noting that these 90’s releases are all strictly on DVD. Due to the non-existence of superior original materials, Mill Creek decided to let form fit function and committed to standard definition format, much to the consternation of the masses. I for one find this approach as charming as it is logical. They look and feel like the 90’s in an electrifying way. 

What remains of Mill Creek’s Ultra Series release schedule is the breathless 2000’s, which saw a new iteration of the giant hero’s multiverse annually between 2000 and 2009. This will lead us likely up to the premier of Shin Ultraman, a film much in the vain of Shin Godzilla, updating the hero as much as celebrating his vintage.

Gridman: The Hyper Agent

What was known briefly in the states as Super Human Samurai Syber Squad, starring a young Matthew Lawrence and the unmistakable vocal talents of one Tim Curry, Gridman: The Hyper Agent is one of a slew of Tokusatsu (Special Effects) Giant Hero Series mined as source material for an English language “remake”. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers set the standard, and VR Troopers, Big Bad Beetleborgs and SSSS took the baton to varied degrees of success. Unlike the other series of this ilk, Tsuburaya Production’s American division Ultracom had a direct hand in the production of SSSS, making it the most direct adaptation. It cleanly preserves a majority of the original material and overall storytelling, which is why watching the original Gridman still feels like a 1:1 nostalgia hit. 

Devised as a celebration of Ultraman’s 25th Anniversary, the self same Tsuburaya Productions took a the familiar plot structure of a human imbued of transformative powers, simplified it to suite an an admittedly younger audience, and skewed the themes to reflect more modern anxieties about information technology, automation, and the increasing “internet of things” by staging its battles in the computer grids and mainframes of our communication and infrastructure networks. 

The principal cast is a trio of tech obsessed middle-school kids Naoto, Ippei and Yuka who have built their own hodgepodge supercomputer and have made contact with a digital super hero Gridman. Their angst, trials and tribulations in adolescence, as well as that of their families and indeed their nemesis, fellow student Takeshi who is decidedly cut from a more antisocial and brooding cloth (and who is incidentally under the puppeteering spell of series big bad Kahn Digifer), make up the bulk of the dramatic material of the series which ran for 39 episodes from 1993-94. Smack dab in the middle of my 3-4th grade experience, SSSS was formative.

Though Gridman is technically a “Giant Hero” series, the titular warrior is actually quite small, using Naoto as a symbiote, fighting monster computer viruses conjured by the imagination of Takeshi and manifested by Kahn Digifer who seek to disrupt and destroy the patterns and of daily life. 

As of 2017 Gridman has been revived as the anime series SSSS. Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon respectively. As one may glean from the titles, these series knit the US and Japanese iterations of the canon together.

AND NOW

MY FAVORITE DISC OF 2021

IS

WAIT, ARE WE ….YEAH? WE’RE SURE?

OK SOOOOOOO, ITS…..

……STREET FIGHTER!?

Unequivocally, yes. This is a diamond standard edition from Mill Creek for a film that does not nearly deserve it, and that makes it all the more a magnificent event. Allow me to be more precise. Street Fighter doesn’t deserve this kind of red celebration for its merits as a work of cinema. It 100% DOES deserve it as a potent and sincere 90’s artifact, as a clunker that went for broke, and as a troubled production that represents an impasse or anomaly for many of its constituent parties.

This “apropos of nothing” top-shelf edition of Street Fighter inspired a rare reaction in me. Upon hearing the news, on the very day of its release, I promptly drove to the nearest Best Buy that had it in stock, bought it outright, and watched it as soon as I got home…including the bonus features. It was such an intuitive action, such a catalyzed sort of behavior that I had no choice but to satisfy the momentum. I could not have been happier, because this was ultimately the correction of an error. I had always wanted to see Street Fighter. I recalled the urge and attraction to it as a child of roughly 10, but I never managed to make it happen. Albeit an ultimately minor picture, and a flop no less, it always felt like one of the “ones that got away”, thus it loomed peculiarly large in my memory. Who knew I only had to wait 27 years until a typically bargain-basket brand would go boutique chic for this 90’s video game adaptation.

As I have uttered before, some films make great Steelbooks and some do not. When you see it, you just know. Street Fighter is firmly in the former camp and is as sharp as they come, replete with an emblazoned clear O-ring for a reversible cover, and it holds within a collectible Bison Dollar (anyone who has seen the film will know why this is equally hilarious and charming).