The best 4K and Blu-ray releases coming out in February 2025

As the movie world exits the January doldrums and coasts on Sundance into the romance and Marvel offerings of February, savvy cinephiles still pay closer attention to what’s heading to their small screens. Each month The A.V. Club does our part to keep you up to date on the best of what’s coming out on Blu-ray and 4K UHD, which is especially important as streaming services become less and less reliable homes for films worth watching. February 2025’s Blu-ray and 4K releases include a long-unavailable experimental take on Shakespeare, a modern classic detective comedy, the continued upgrading of favorites to 4K, and more. Read on and find films from Shane Black, David Fincher, Joan Micklin Silver, Jean-Luc Godard, and John Hughes.

King Lear Blu-ray

Available February 11, 2025

Criterion is putting out Jean-Luc Godard’s heady anti-adaptation of King Lear after the oddball film (which happens to be the French New Wave master’s first English-language narrative feature) has been only readily available on the fringes. Like “scans off a crappy Italian DVD” fringes. This critic will be focusing on the film for our monthly Cult Of Criterion feature, but here are some other reasons to get excited about the new edition: A new 2K restoration, new interviews with Molly Ringwald and Peter Sellars, and New Yorker critic and Godard expert Richard Brody is all over this thing, contributing both an essay and interview. These certainly won’t make the film more intellectually accessible, but hey, at least it’ll be easier to argue about now.

The Nice Guys 4K

Available February 11, 2025

One of Shane Black’s strongest and most slept-on films, The Nice Guys gets a nice upgrade here so you can watch Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe’s dirtbag comic chemistry spark over and over again. It’s still seemingly a barebones release, reflective again of Warner Bros.’ lack of faith in the film, but it’s still a hilarious and endearingly silly movie that deserves to be seen as crisply as possible.

Oscar Micheaux: The Complete Collection Blu-ray

Available February 11, 2025

A groundbreaking Black director working independently from the mainstream film industry, Oscar Micheaux not only captured Black life as it was lived during the early era of cinema, but interpreted familiar Hollywood genres through his Black casts and crews. This 17-film collection of all but the filmmaker’s many lost films, including classics like Within Our Gates and the Paul Robeson-starring Body And Soul (he’s phenomenal in a dual role, especially as the slimy preacher), offers plenty of 4K editions and seven new restorations. Some of these films come from damaged surviving elements, and might be a little jankier watches than the other entries on this list. In many cases, it’s a wonder they still exist at all. But as far as important films for the form’s history go, it’s hard to find a better and more exciting deal than this.

Alice, Sweet Alice 4K

Available February 11, 2025

Of course the nasty freaks at Arrow are dropping a new restoration of the hyper-Catholic neo-slasher Alice, Sweet Alice. Splitting the uprights between 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween, this formative 1976 genre film contains giallo elements as well as thoroughly American fare—including a young Brooke Shields in her debut role. A handful of new interviews supplement some familiar special features, briefly distracting from the killer’s disturbing outfit and the kills’ grim realism.

Panic Room 4K Steelbook

Available February 18, 2025

David Fincher is on a tear. After releasing a new restoration of Seven last month (and a Steelbook of The Social Network this month, though that 4K has already been available), we’re also getting a nice polished version of Panic Room, a pulpy B-movie with plenty of Fincher flourishes. In fact, the movie can feel downright show-offy at times, but because the narrative itself is so deliciously tight, the ornamentation is welcome. Once your heart calms down from the film’s cat-and-mouse home invasion, you can check out all of the special features (most of which were shot by The Empty Man’s David Prior, including an hour-long making-of doc).

Crossing Delancey 4K

Available February 18, 2025

Joining Joan Micklin Silver’s Chilly Scenes Of Winter and Hester Street in the 4K club, this new Criterion edition of Crossing Delancey brings the filmmaker’s most well-known movie up to the quality we’d expect. The rom-com navigates Jewish traditions, expectations, and realities as it finds a ton of NYC charm in Isabelle’s (Amy Irving) plight. Peter Riegert winningly plays a pickle vendor(!) while the complexities of relationships, cultural mores, and working in the city collide in Silver’s opus. Irving, Riegert, and screenwriter-playwright Susan Sandler are featured in a new making-of feature included with the disc.

Uncle Buck 4K

Available February 18, 2025

Is it that important that Uncle Buck be presented in 4K? What about with two new audio commentaries and a new interview with Jean Louisa Kelly? These are all “nice to haves” and not “need to haves,” but when a film is as beloved as the John Hughes/John Candy classic, it’s hard to have extra features not feel like cherries on top. What isn’t included in this upgraded edition of the goofball comedy is the extremely long initial cut that saw Hughes indulge his young performers, including Macaulay Culkin, endlessly.

Amadeus 4K



Available February 25, 2025

As The A.V. Club’s Matt Schimkowitz wrote upon this Blu-ray’s announcement, for decades, the only version of this film available has been the three-hour director’s cut. “The superbly edited original version of Amadeus used overlapping sound cues for a lively flow between scenes,” wrote Tasha Robinson for The A.V. Club in 2013, “and the new version breaks up some of that flow with lengthy, talky interludes.” Now, Milos Forman’s delicious melding of professional and personal bitterness with classical music will have a bit more of a spring in its step when you watch it at home.