So Barnes and Noble was having a sale on all of their Criterion Collection stock, where everything was 50% off. So DVD's were about $10USD and Blu-Rays were $20USD. Sounds like standard pricing for stuff that's old, and you're probably wondering what non-Japanese person would spend $40USD on a single movie.
Spoiler: me explaining whilst fangasming over Criterion Collection (click to see content)
Well, as I learned back when I was a pretentious film student (never really panned out), Criterion is a group that specializes in distributing movies that are culturally significant (their first release was Citizen Kane before Ted Turner bought the rights) for multiple countries, did a lot of stuff that's taken for granted nowadays (ie: They were the first company to release a movie with hardcoded blackbars to preserve the widescreen picture for standard definition), and everything they put out has ridiculously high-quality visual and audio standards.
And most importantly, since they're a small, independent company, everything is dedicated to the movie itself. No FBI WARNING screens, no hardcoded trailers for other movies, nothing. Well except for the group logo that plays before the movie, but it's like 5 seconds long with no audio, who cares.
So under most circumstances, the movies were usually out of my financial reach, but now...
The movie that made people love Japan, and the movie that made us realize how fucked up Japan is.