Werner Herzog's ‘Grizzly Man' Joins the Criterion Collection — Plus ‘The English Patient,’ ‘Nashville' and ‘Shop Around the Corner’

Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.

Herzog's film arrives alongside a strong batch that includes Anthony Minghella's "The English Patient," a flawed, but sweeping Best Picture winner that, given how rarely films are made on such a grand scale anymore, deserves a rewatch; That famous “Seinfeld” episode did its reputation no favor either. At the time, “Fargo” and “Secrets and Lies” were seen by critics as the better best picture nominees.

Ernst Lubitsch's "The Shop Around the Corner," a wonderful '40s gem that was later remade as "You've Got Mail" is also joining Criterion, and so the 4K upgrade of Robert Altman's "Nashville," which, while still a terrific film, isn't my favorite '70s Altman. Give me "3 Women," "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "The Long Goodbye," and "California Split" any day of the week. Of course, "Nashville" is the most influential of the bunch, and very much part of Altman’s legacy.

Still, it's the Herzog that feels like the most overdue addition, a documentary that has only grown in stature over the past two decades and is finally getting a much-needed Criterion treatment.

For those who somehow haven't seen it, "Grizzly Man" is built from more than 100 hours of footage shot by Timothy Treadwell, the self-styled environmentalist who spent 13 summers living among the grizzly bears of Alaska before one of them killed him and his partner, Amie Huguenard.

Herzog takes that raw material and shapes it into something far stranger than a standard nature doc. It's a portrait of obsession, performance, loneliness, and self-mythology, and it's one of those films that gets stranger and richer the longer it sits with you.

What most intrigues me about "Grizzly Man" is how clearly Herzog is fascinated by Treadwell, even admiring of his instincts behind the camera, yet he never fully buys into his worldview. Treadwell saw kinship and harmony in the wild. Herzog, in his unmistakable narration, sees a natural world that is fundamentally indifferent to us.

Herzog has been making documentaries for more than 50 years, with many great ones, including "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" and "Lessons of Darkness," but "Grizzly Man" remains his crowning achievement in nonfiction.