Dust off your Netflix queue, or just go down to the video rental place, if there’s a decent one nearby (there isn’t arounddrunken-angel.jpg here), here are some recent DVDs of note, that you just might not read about in the weekly entertainment section.

The folks at Criterion have been busy little bees . . . in November, they released early films from two of their (and my) favorite directors: Ingmar Bergman (Sawdust and Tinsel) and Akira Kurosawa (Drunken Angel). The Bergman is from the period before his international breakthrough Smiles of A Summer Night, and is a fair example of his early work. Drunken Angel is a taut noir with the distinction of being Toshiro Mifune’s first collaboration with Kurosawa. He stars as a tubercular gangster who forms an uneasy relationship with doctor Takashi Shimura.

Other notable recent Criterions are Two Lane Blacktop, Monte Hellman’s existential road picture [starring James Taylor (!) and Dennis Wilson (!!)]; Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s fifteen-hour-plus Berlin Alexanderplatz; John Huston’s Under the Volcano; and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.

Lest this seem like a paid advertisement for my favorite DVD company, there have been decent DVDs from other houses lately . . . Warner released a box set of five remastered kubrick-collection.jpgStanley Kubrick classics, finally giving some iconic films [2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] the treatment they deserve. All of the titles are available separately, as well. Now if we could only get some traction on some of his other great films, like Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Barry Lyndon (1975), available at present only in inferior transfers. Also from Warners is O Lucky Man (1973), Lindsay Anderson’s pitch black satire starring Malcom McDowell.

Finally, a restored print of Charle’s Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, first released to theaters in 1977, became the one of the best-reviewed films of 2007. Detailing the life of despair of an African American working in a slaughterhouse to support his family, it’s available in a two disc set from Milestone, along with two other Burnett features and a handful of shorts.