It was ten years ago this week that my first DVD Report appeared on CinemaSight. At the time, DVD was the king of home media, having been around for more than ten years and having long since supplanted VHS as the preferred format for renters and collectors. Ten years later, Blu-ray is the preferred format for collectors, whereas renters are more inclined to stream than rent an actual disc. How long will it be before DVDs and Blu-rays are totally extinct? No one knows, but so long as there is demand from sufficient numbers of collectors, that won’t be for a while.

The decline in DVD and Blu-ray sales has stopped the major studios from releasing all but new films in disc format. New DVD and Blu-ray releases of classic films have become the province of boutique labels such as Criterion, Twilight Time, and Kino Lorber. Only Warner Bros, mostly through its Warner Archive, continues to consistently release films on disc from its deep catalogue, which includes old MGM and RKO films in addition to the studio’s own output.

So, here we go into our 11th year with comments on the new (Silence, Julieta, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, A Monster Calls, 20th Century Women, and Patriots Day) and the new-to-Blu-ray (Blow-Up, What’s the Matter with Helen?, and Lifeboat).

Martin Scorsese has received nine Oscar nominations for directing, and one win (for 2006’s The Departed) to date. Despite early recognition from several critics’ groups, he failed to receive a tenth nomination this year for Silence, the passion project it has taken him nearly thirty years to make. That’s a shame, because this moving, albeit sorrowful, film about the 17th Century martyrdom of Japanese Christians is one of his best. Andrew Garfield, who received an Oscar nomination for his moving performance in Hacksaw Ridge is even better here as the conflicted Portuguese Jesuit priest on a journey to find his mentor (Liam Neeson), rumored to have renounced his faith. The superb international cast also includes Adam Driver as Garfield’s fellow Jesuit, Issai Ogata as the feared inquisitor, and Yosuke Kubozuka as a sometimes Christian. The film’s truly majestic cinematography was Oscar nominated, but lost to La La Land.

Pedro Almodovar’s best films have always been the ones about women. Julieta is a film that not only can be compared favorably to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, and Talk to Her, but can even be said to surpass them. Superbly played by two actresses (Emma Suarez, Adriana Udarte) sharing the title role, Julieta is a riveting tour-de-force about a woman who experiences the greatest of joys in her life, but also the greatest of tragedies. Be prepared to sob your heart out at the film’s emotionally draining conclusion, especially if you’re a woman.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the first of five intended prequels to the Harry Potter series to be directed by David Yates, who also directed the last four of the eight Harry Potter movies. Set in 1926 New York, it is a nicely done fantasy film that benefits from strong performances from Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Folger, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, and Colin Farrell who morphs into Johnny Depp who will take over his villainous role in the follow-up film.

Despite its title, J.A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls is not a horror movie. It’s a tender, coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy (Lewis MacDougall) who conjures up a tree monster to help him cope with the impending death of his mother (Felicity Jones). As such, it is quite effective. Jones, Sigourney Weaver as her mother, and Liam Neesom as the voice of the monster are all fine, but the film belongs to young MacDougall in a very impressive breakthrough performance in what was only his second film.

Like Mike Miller’s previous films (Thumbsucker, Beginners), 20th Century Women is a quirky comedy that is extremely good in bits, but doesn’t add up to all that much in the end. Annette Bening comes off best as a middle-aged mother in 1979 who has a hard time coping with the changing times. She enlists the aid of 30-something Greta Gerwig and 19-year-old Elle Fanning in shaping her impressionable 15-year-old son (Lucas Jade Zumann). Nothing is resolved in the narrative, but a voiceover at the end brings us up to date on the main characters.

In theatres in just three months after their last real-life collaboration, Deepwater Horizon, director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg were back with Patriots Day, their film about the April, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. It’s decently made, but offers nothing we haven’t seen done as it was happening on TV in real time.

Was it the pseudo-mystery of the plot or the casual nudity that made Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up a must-see film fifty years ago? While it was the most accessible of the prolific Italian director’s films, the first of only three he made in English, it really doesn’t hold up very well. Still, if you’re going to watch it, there’s no better vehicle for doing so than Criterion’s restored Blu-ray complete with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from Criterion, including vintage interviews with stars David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave.

One of the last of the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? imitations, Curtis Harrington’s 1972 film, What’s the Matter with Helen? , has been released on Blu-ray by Scream Factory. The film marked Debbie Reynolds’ last starring role in a film until 1996’s Mother, and her last film, except for a couple of voice performances, for twenty years. Had the film been a bigger success, she might have filled those years with a slew of similarly themed horror film roles, but that was not to be. We do, however, have this one featuring the versatile actress still at the top of her game. Shelley Winters co-stars as her business partner and nemesis, with Dennis Weaver and Agnes Moorehead leading the supporting cast.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 suspense thriller Lifeboat has finally made it to Blu-ray in the U.S. thanks to Kino Lorber. Now you can see Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Canada Lee, and company like they were meant to be seen on home video. This is the one that takes place entirely on an open boat adrift in the middle of the sea. How then, does Hitchcock make his trademark cameo appearance? See it and find out!

This week’s new releases include Paterson and the new to Blu-ray Ride the High Country.