There is enough variety here that I can almost guarantee that everyone will find something essential to their collection. Reading the other customer reviews, I see that my preferences are so different that my naming them can only illustrate my point. I will name them anyway.
From the first disc, Roy Andersson's "World of Glory" and Lynne Ramsay's "Gasman" are what I would consider the best work on display. But then, I went into it believing them the best filmmakers represented. If, for example, you think Christopher Nolan is a visionary, you will probably find that "Doodlebug" confirms your opinion.
Disc Two has a greater concentration of interesting work. "Copy Shop" shows how a film can be wholly experimental while still being immensely entertaining. "Boy and Bicycle," made so long ago that director Tony Scott (TOP GUN, etc.) was young enough to play the part of "boy" in his brother's film, is one of film history's brave follies, in that it taps Joyce's ULYSSES as an influence. Sadly, the mumbling stream-of-consciousness voice-over just gets in the way of its eloquent images, more reminiscent of Joris Ivans than of the Scott Brothers' advertising or feature work. Still, well worth seeing as representing a path not taken.
"Before Dawn" is done in a single, ten-minute take, and is remarkable for it's interior dramatic construction; "Election Night" is at once excruciating and hilarious; similarly, "Six-Shooter" is a well-constructed drama that mixes hilarity and the macabre in unexpected ways; and finally, "The Opening Night of Close-Up," shot on video, documents the behind-the-scenes agony of watching Kiarostami's masterwork open in a London movie house, defining the expression "pearls before swine" to a "T."
