Build a Blu-Ray Collection Worthy of Your Shelves

Have you ever looked at your ageing collection of DVD’s or (heaven forbid) VHS tapes and wondered if it isn’t time for you to upgrade to buying your favourite films on Blu-ray? Do you own a nice big flat screen TV, perhaps even with a 4K screen and yet use it to display low-quality versions of blockbuster films? Then perhaps it’s time you started to really enjoy your time spent watching films.

If you haven’t got at least an HD TV and a Blu-ray player we suggest you read our article Do I need Blu-ray or a 4K TV?  as this guide won’t help you much (although there’s nothing to stop you using these suggestions to build a DVD collection, we just can’t recommend that in all good conscience).

This is our guide to help you out with building a collection of Blu-ray films that you can be proud of. No-one wants their friends looking at their shelves and saying things like ‘Twilight? Vampires don’t sparkle!’. That actually happened to me a while ago and I assure you, my friends did not believe my reasoning. I bought those films even though I fully expected to hate them. I’m extremely picky about films which feature vampires, zombies or werewolves because most are terrible. Like the Twilight films. When I say that now, though, I don’t have to hedge around the issue. I’ve actually seen them. At some point, I’ll probably review them properly but I don’t think I’ll be saying anything nice. My friends were right anyway, vampires don’t sparkle.

We’ll be updating this post on a regular basis as we decide which films need to be added to this selection. Don’t rush out and buy all these just have a look and see if you agree with any of our choices. There’s no point buying things that you hate, we’re not the kind of critics that want you to feel bad because you don’t agree with our opinion. There’s no order to this list, we don’t really believe in trying to rank works of art from one to ten as if number one is actually better.

What we think these films all share:

• These films are all highly enjoyable
• They all have lots of re-watch value
• They have a sense of humour
• They will not be a guilty pleasure

Affiliate Links

A couple of points about our recommendations.

• Firstly we’re linking to Amazon so these are affiliate links. If you follow one of our links to Amazon and buy the product we’ll get a small fee, the product won’t cost you any more than it would otherwise.
• Secondly, we only recommend things we actually use or have seen ourselves and liked. We will never suggest you buy something that we didn’t like. If we give something a bad review and you disagree that’s cool, our linking it is not an endorsement, though.
• Thirdly it helps us out if you use the links but we don’t want to you to feel obligated to do so.
• Finally, we will tend to link one version of the product i.e. the 3D Blu-ray version of a film. If you follow the link, make sure that you check it’s the version you actually want (3D? 4K? Blu-ray or DVD). If you follow the link and go find a different version we’ll still get credit from Amazon so it’ll help us out even if you want a slightly different product (or a totally different product for that matter).

Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow

The studio couldn’t decide what they wanted to call this film but that didn’t prevent them producing an excellent and surprisingly thoughtful sci-fi action piece. If you want the brief version, imagine Groundhog Day with an alien invasion, smart sci-fi action and just about as much humour as the Bill Murray classic.

Tom Cruise plays Major William Cage a PR guy who has joined the army and been perfectly happy doing the publicity for the human campaign in Europe to defeat an alien invasion. Everything is going fine for him until his superior officer decides they really need him to film from the front line of the war. As he’s not a real soldier he tries to refuse and wakes up to find himself demoted to front line cannon fodder.

He’s completely unsuited to fighting in a power armour frame as he’s never even used one and has no combat experience whatsoever. He finds himself thrust into a modern version of D-Day and for some reason wakes up afterwards to find time has reset and he’s back at the base. Each time his day ends he goes back to the start and he must find a way to stop the loop. That’s where Emily Blunt comes in, an incredibly famous special forces soldier who, it turns out, had the same time loop experience. Together they attempt to turn the tide of the human counter-invasion of Europe which seems doomed to failure.

Not only is the film excellent fun but it’s highly rewatchable. Once you’ve seen it you’ll spot a lot more detail on rewatching. The Blu-ray also contains a lot of extras that increase value for money and explain how they filmed this rather epic piece. If you are familiar with Starship Troopers (the film) you’ll have seen what power armoured soldiers looked like in 1997. That’s right, they looked like guys not wearing power armour because they couldn’t do it justice so had to just make them soldiers wearing flak jackets. Edge of Tomorrow completely sells its version of power armour and it’s utterly convincing from the dropships they use to deliver their troops to the weaponry they pair with it. Cruise and Blunt have excellent chemistry and the cast backs them up well. Let’s face it, if you like sci-fi action and you like Groundhog Day this is a perfect treat. I’d be quite happy to watch both back to back for the maximum of time loop fun. Possibly throwing in Back to the Future for a real marathon.

Guardians of the Galaxy

This is one of the biggest hits of 2014 and deservedly so. It’s hysterically funny, it has an amazing soundtrack, the characters are engaging and loveable and the villain seems to have some kind of motivation for his actions. It was a bit of a surprise hit from the perspective of film critics but I think it was clear to all the fans it’d be a big success. You cannot really beat Vin Diesel playing a talking tree who only says ‘I am Groot’. The wonderful story about that is despite the fact he has one line Diesel insisted on recording lots of versions of him saying it so they could really sell the emotion. That’s the funny thing, it actually is an emotional performance. You don’t really know what he’s saying but a bit like a little gibbering Minion you certainly feel like you understand what Groot is getting at.

Although if you were to include a talking racoon character who’s basically an escaped lab experiment and is obsessed with explosives, you might just manage to beat the tree. Oh wait a minute, that’s precisely what they did. So what’s left? Chris Pine plays the self-styled hero, Starlord aka Peter Quill. A space vagabond who was kidnapped from earth sometime in the 80’s (judging by the music he still plays on his vintage Sony Walkman) and has been hanging around with some rather piratical aliens ever since.

The Blu-ray extras are excellent but even if they weren’t this film is definitely worth watching and re-watching. It’s still the best of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and we can’t wait for the sequel to be out in 2017. It’s definitely worth having in your collection. Even better you don’t need the other films to understand this one – it’s the same universe but it doesn’t involve the Avengers so you don’t need to watch those films to follow this one.