NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (January 2020): Criterion have transferred Alfonso Cuarón's Roma to Blu-ray. It is from a "4K digital master, supervised by director Alfonso Cuarón". It looks wonderful in the 2.39:1 widescreen and beautifully contrasted black and white. Kudos to Cuarón's own cinematography filled with poetically beautiful shots. The image is housed on a dual-layered disc with a high bitrate and is flawless.

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use a 7.1 Atmos track (24-bit) - Criterion's first! - in the original Spanish language. It soudns as good as it looks with some deft separations in aggressive scenes (guns, crowds, the ocean). There is plenty of music of the period and other fitting pieces including Leo Dan, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, Rocío Dúrcal, Los Pasteles Verdes, Javier Solís, Víctor Iturbide "El Pirulí", Banda Dragones de Mazatepec, Luis Pérez Meza and others. Criterion offer optional English, French and Spanish (SDH) subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

NOTE: The Spanish subtitles are in white with Mixteco subtitles in brackets.

The Criterion Blu-ray offers plenty in the supplements section. Road to “Roma” is an 1 1/4 hour new documentary about the making of the film, featuring behind-the-scenes footage and an interview with Cuarón. Filmmakers Andre's Clariond Rangel, Gabriel Nuncio, and Alejandro Duran were granted remarkable access during the making of Roma, shooting hundreds of hours of on-set footage that shows director Alfonso Cuarón working with his actors and production team, setting up shots, and struggling with his own childhood memories. The resulting documentary is a rare look at a singular creative process. Snapshots from the Set, is a new 32-minute documentary featuring actors Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira, producers Gabriela Rodríguez and Nicolás Celis, production designer Eugenio Caballero, casting director Luis Rosales, executive producer David Linde, and others. It features behind-the-scenes footage and interviews shot during the production of Roma, with principles who discuss the challenges and rewards of bringing to life director Alfonso Cuaron's most personal project. The Look of Roma runs 20-minutes. Director Alfonso Cuaron began work on the look of Roma long before principal photography started, testing cameras, lenses, and film stocks in order to be able to best capture his vision of Mexico in the early 1970s. In this 2019 documentary, Cuaron, postproduction supervisor Carlos Morales, editor Adam Gough, and finishing artist Steven J. Scott discuss the detailed approach to the film's cinematography, from preproduction to visual effects to the final lab work. Sound of Roma is another documentary. Roma's complex and layered visual design is matched by its immersive sound mix. To achieve this, the postproduction sound team—Skip Lievsay, Craig Henighan, and Sergio Diaz—utilized the dynamic range of Dolby's Atmos sound system, combining hours of rich location audio and original source recordings to recreate the soundscapes of director Alfonso Cuaron's childhood. In this 2019 program, the three—along with Cuarón and editor Adam Gough—explain their approach to the material, and explore scenes from the film that demonstrate the challenges and power of their work. There is also a new 19-minute documentary about the film’s ambitious theatrical campaign and social impact in Mexico, featuring Celis and Rodríguez. It is entitled Roma Brings Us Together. For director Alfonso Cuaron, ensuring that Roma would be shown throughout Mexico was of paramount importance. That meant updating movie theaters around the country so that the film could be seen and heard as it was meant to be. For viewers outside urban centers, his team took the film to them. In this 2019 program, they discuss the scope of their efforts and the many ways the film has had a lasting cultural impact. There is also a trailer and teaser for the film and it has a liner notes booklet with essays by novelist Valeria Luiselli and historian Enrique Krauze, along with writing by author Aurelio Asiain and production-design images with notes by Caballero.

Roma has Alfonso Cuarón's delicate brilliance - visually impacting and balanced. I really concur with what John Nugent says in his review "Cuarón has always loved challenging the boundaries of technical innovation — his favourite flourish, the unbroken single-take, is present and correct here — but, more so than in the flashier Gravity or grittier Children Of Men, this has real soul to it. Aided in no small part by Aparicio’s stunning debut performance, there is a devastating emotional coda that will wrongfoot you, and still leave you feeling buoyant. Perhaps Roma’s most impressive feat is its humanism: its understanding of the chaos of life, and its unerring respect for those who meet that chaos with love. Really, Roma feels like a celebration of what it means to feel alive."

It's a film that we rarely see in any time period and Cuarón remains one of my favorite directors (Sólo con Tu Pareja, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien and, especially, 1998's Great Expectations.) Criterion's Roma is a must-own Blu-ray, imo. Buy with great anticipation! Just a brilliant gem off a film and keepsake package.

Gary Tooze