Max Von Sydow's chess game with Death is one of the most iconic scenes in all of cinema, and rarely has it looked better than the way it appears on the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray release of The Seventh Seal ($40, also on DVD).

No matter how many times you've seen Ingmar Bergman's seminal 1957 masterpiece, the image on the disc is a revelation, exposing a depth and detail that simply didn't seem present before. Viewers encountering the film for the first time will find the superlative transfer makes the tale of a knight (Von Sydow) who returns home from the Crusades during the Black Plague even more engaging.

Though a weighty meditation on mortality and the meaning of life, The Seventh Seal is also one of Bergman's most accessible films. The excellent assortment of supplements (some recycled from Criterion's original DVD release) help put the movie and its maker into context, beginning with audio commentary by Bergman historian Peter Cowie, who speaks at length about the impact The Seventh Seal had on the art-film scene of its era.

Another extra is the 83-minute documentary Bergman Island, shot in 2003 and culled from a much longer version originally aired on Swedish television. Director Marie Nyrerod was granted unusual access by the normally reclusive filmmaker, who allowed her to pore through his 16-millimeter making-of movies shot on the sets of the projects he directed. The documentary is a fitting testament to Bergman, who died in 2007, proving that despite the somber tone of many of his works, his zeal for life and his intellectual curiosity remained intact to the end.

TV ON BLU-RAY

The increasing number of TV shows and miniseries airing in high definition is good news for the Blu-ray format, since those programs tend to look even better on disc. The first two seasons of ABC's popular Lost (Buena Vista Home Entertainment, $70 each) sport eye-popping colors and detail, particularly the second season, which makes you feel like you are spying on the actors through a window instead of watching them on your TV screen.

Generation Kill (HBO Home Video, $80), a seven-episode miniseries that follows a group of U.S. Marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, also looks better on Blu-ray, although the bleached, blown-out color palette doesn't quite make for demo material. Blu-ray's extra storage capacity allows for more extras than DVD versions can accommodate, such as the ability to access a pop-up menu during each of the episodes that offers military mission maps and glossaries.

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