I've split these into two categories: 1990-2000 and 2000-present (I should note that Animated and B&W titles are going in their own category). The majority of these titles were originally mastered for DVD, but a fair number are HD-DVD ports. The greatest challenge facing the studios on these titles was not being lazy and just going auto-pilot on them. The 2006 Stargate Blu-ray (now discontinued and replaced by a superior version) is a great example of a screw-up in this regard.
1990-2000
Best of the Best
Braveheart: Paramount Sapphire Series
Paramount's phenomenal job on Gibson's oft-imitated (in Big Speech scenes) Best Picture winner more than makes up for the screw-up on Gladiator's transfer. I missed it in theaters and first saw Braveheart on VHS. I think the two-tape set is still somewhere amongst my belongings. The DVD was a revelation, and this was yet another.
Natural Born Killers
My review was brief, but the extreme care given to this transfer is obvious based on the heavy involvement of Oliver Stone in re-cutting the movie and providing a very tight reflection essay on one of his most controversial films in a career full of them.
Heat
Three directors I think of as being the most meticulous when it comes to HD transfers of their movies: Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, and Michael Mann. Jeff mentioned a while ago that this transfer didn't make him sit up and go "wow!", but after doing an exhaustive side-by-side comparison of the cut on this Blu-ray and the previous DVD edition, I'm pretty impressed with the improved contrast depth. I've got too many irons in the fire at the moment to put together a standalone piece on the differences in the edit just now, but I'll have it up in the next week.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The most recent of the Original Series movies definitely carries the best source from which to work. I had the misfortune to miss this one theatrically but caught its predecessor instead with my father. None of the DNR issues reported on older titles in the Original Motion Picture Collection are present here.
Forrest Gump : Paramount Sapphire Series
From my initial thoughts:
The Gump disc's resolution upgrade is most evident thanks to the abundant detail evident in each frame of Zemeckis' multi-period film, from costuming to trees and dust and brush. Richer color depth and so on are in there, but the big difference visually is how fluidly you can watch the picture without unintended distractions. The lower-res afforded by DVD caused a lot of blur and unintentional optical illusions in checkered or otherwise patterned fabric. All those sweeping aerial shots, and particularly the very busy Vietnam scenes are crystal-clear now. It's a smoother ride overall that requires less corneal gymnastics.
Fight Club
One of the first DVDs I bought was the "brown paper wrapper" version of Fight Club, which set a high water mark for quantity and quality of extras presented on the format. The 10th Anniversary Blu-ray is a big jump forward in picture quality from the DVD and takes all the extras (including easter eggs) and arranges them in a nice, straightforward fashion after a fake-out when the disc loads. They added in a couple of new supplements, one of which is the Spike TV Awards "Guy Movie Hall of Fame" acceptance by Fincher, Norton, and Pitt (who calls presenter Mel Gibson "sugartits" once on-stage).
The Mask of Zorro
There are plenty who have grown to pretend as though they've hated this movie all along. Banderas and Zeta-Jones are not the big box office draws that they were when this one came out, and the allegedly-awful sequel (which I've yet to watch) didn't help the legacy of the first revival of the franchise with a latin Zorro. A musical adaptation of the Isabel Allende novel has also since flopped and closed. I may be unfairly influenced by having been a young Latino boy who put on a cape and played with toy swords. Zorro was the "superhero" that it was "okay" for me to play on the playground. All the rest have to be really Anglo-riffic. The transfer on this Blu-ray tugged on that memory thread that tied back to my first viewing of the movie in a theater.
HD-DVD Refugee
12 Monkeys
My favorite Gilliam movie joins other titles listed below as HD-DVD "ports". They're almost all feature-identical to the "Red-ray" versions (albeit with a higher bitrate generally). I never saw a single one of these on HD-DVD, so I'm no authority on comparing presentation, but the video on this disc uses up a whopping 38GB of space. My years-old DVD SE pales in comparison to this disc, which features more film-like grain presentation and better color gamut.
2000-present
Best of the Best
Monsoon Wedding: The Criterion Collection
One of Criterion's great masterstrokes this year was their gorgeous work on not only this 16mm-shot feature but the various short films included as well. Mira Nair does not deserve "director jail" or anything resembling it due to having been stuck with helming the quite drama-free life story of Amelia Earhart. I would hope, however, that she uses this opportunity to make something independently in India, free of studio overhead and expectations ruling her creative work. She is one of my favorite modern filmmakers thanks to this movie. Someone hand her a RED camera, a decent budget to hire the right people, hopefully re-team her with Naseeruddin Shah, and see what happens.
Best of the Best
HD-DVD Refugee
Zodiac
Another "the Academy will answer to the Movie Gods" case, I wanted to give some special attention to this, the first movie shot on full HD cameras to hit an HD home video format. The HD-DVD came out almost a year to the day that this Blu-ray hit the streets wayyy back in January 2009. They've wisely maintained the split of the feature on disc one and the supplemental stuff on disc 2.
Ride Around the World
From my just-posted review:
This 2008 IMAX feature went largely-unnoticed by review sites when it hit shelves at the beginning of December, but it deserves to be mentioned here. Argentina, Morocco, Mexico, British Columbia, and good ol' Texas look absolutely majestic as recorded here. The 70mm sequences in The Dark Knight are about as close as most people have gotten to actually seeing what large-format film can look like in HD. This provides an exceptional opportunity to really show off what your setup can do.
HD-DVD Refugee
Children of Men
Of the various HD-DVD Refugees that hit Blu this year, this one looks the best. Cuaron's film was ignored by the Academy for so much as a nomination just three years ago. One might imagine that had the "field of ten" been in play then, we could have seen Children of Men as well as Pan's Labyrinth nominated for Best Picture.
HD-DVD Refugee
Seabiscuit
The "reference scene" on this one would be...any of the horse-racing sequences. It's not as much a blur in HD, and you get better bearings than on DVD (how I originally saw it).
HD-DVD Refugee
Cinderella Man
Deep, dark sepia tones and crisp, clean movement really show this movie off the way it deserves to be seen.
HD-DVD Refugee
Hot Fuzz
In addition to the movie being great, this disc looks better than most "real" action movies have for me on Blu-ray. Most of those titles are so focused on the mass market that they cram everything on one disc and pay no attention to giving preference to the bitrate on the disc.
HD-DVD Refugee
Shaun of the Dead
The only thing I don't like here is that this title, whose DVD menus were fun and matched the movie, has been assimilated into the collective that is Universal's totalitarian menu structure and style. The picture looks as good as I remember the packed mall-tiplex screenings I hit when it was in general release.
The Highly-Regarded But Unseen
(1990-2000) The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Leon: The Professional, Chungking Express, Bottle Rocket, Star Trek TNG Collection, Contact, Payback
(2000-present) Sin City, Winged Migration, 300
Recent Catalog pt.2 will cover titles released from 1980-1990. Stay tuned.
Discs of the Year is a look back at the year in disc releases and trends, from the best to the worst.