The best new Blu-ray and 4K releases in November 2025

“A Better Tomorrow Trilogy” (Shout! Factory, 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

When producer Tsui Hark asked John Woo to write and direct a crime film in the mid-1980s, the result was not only the start of a classic trilogy but a reset for Woo that led to his career as an internationally revered action auteur. The 1986 gangster saga “A Better Tomorrow” remains one of the director’s greatest and most influential works, an offbeat combination of violence and sentimentality that looks forward to later Woo gems like “The Killer” and “Hard Boiled.”

Scream! Factory’s extras-packed package includes the two “Better Tomorrow” films directed by Woo as well as a third film directed by Hark; all three are essential viewings for Hong Kong action fans, and they’ve never looked or sounded as good at home as they do here. Also highly recommended: Shout’s deluxe edition of “Hard Boiled,” which revives the out-of-print Criterion audio commentary and adds several new special features to the mix. —JH

Available November 4

“Burden of Dreams” (Criterion Collection, 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

The great documentary filmmaker Les Blank, who died in 2013, was best known for portraits of musicians, such as Ry Cooder and Huey Lewis. But in one of several turns of his camera to German filmmaker Werner Herzog, his 1982 “Burden of Dreams” documented the massive production of “Fitzcarraldo” in the Amazon jungle, where Herzog attempted to build a stand-alone opera house. That film also includes a sequence of Herzog asking hundreds of indigenous locals to pull a 320 steamer over a mountain, which Blank’s film captures in all its danger and glory.

The new 4K transfer was overseen by Les’ son Harrod Blank, while the Criterion edition also includes an audio commentary by Blank with his sound recordist and editor Maureen Gosling, as well as Herzog himself. Blank’s short film “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” (which is exactly what it sounds like) is also included on the disc. —RL

Available November 11

“The Descent” (Lionsgate, 4K UHD and Blu-ray Steelbook)

What Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” did for showers, Neil Marshall’s “The Descent” did for caves in 2005, while reminding you that you probably shouldn’t have walked into one in the first place. In this terrifying Australian thriller, six women go off the grid into an unknown cave system in Appalachia and are tested by, well, blind subterranean creatures hunting for sound, but also by each other. Past grievances surface as the walls literally close in on the group of friends, much to do with the death of Sarah’s (Shauna Macdonald, shocking) husband and daughter in a freak accident a year ago. Her supposed best friend, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), meanwhile, is more connected to the deaths than Sarah would like to know. And yet when she finds out, even more hell breaks loose on top of what is already hell.

Lionsgate’s 4K UHD Steelbook release includes both the US theatrical and original cuts of the film, which have wildly different endings, including a more supposedly hopeful one (and you can guess which one it is) and a grim one to the finish line. This claustrophobic classic is worth revisiting and owning in time for its 20th anniversary. —RL

Available November 11

“Abbas Kiarostami — Early Short Films and Features” (Criterion, Blu-ray)

Criterion revives its beloved and missed “Eclipse” label with this 17-film boxed set dedicated to one of the greatest directors of all time, whose early works are presented here in beautiful new restorations. Even the most die-hard Kiarostami disciple will find something new to discover among the wealth of documentaries, shorts, narrative features and animations, from the director’s 1970 debut “Bread and Alley” to his 1989 documentary “Homework.”

The footage comes from Kiarostami’s days working for Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (aka Kanoon), where he used the classroom as a laboratory for stories for and about children, and to explore Iranian society in all its cultural and political complexity. One of the most vital physical media releases of 2025. —JH

Available November 18

“Doris Day Collection” (Warner Archive, Blu-ray)

Warner Archive continues its series of essential packages dedicated to Hollywood’s golden age with this collection of exciting musicals, a set that showcases Doris Day’s talent in its often overlooked breadth. Day’s vehicle with Rock Hudson has given her an unfair reputation among some modern viewers as a saccharine leading lady in dated rom-coms, but a film like “Love Me Or Leave Me” quickly dispels that notion with its shockingly gritty portrait of an abusive relationship (all the more shocking for its glossy and colorful CinemaScope photography).

Also included: Michael Curtiz’s Academy Award-winning “Romance on the High Seas,” the 1951 musical “Lullaby of Broadway,” and Day’s final musical appearance in “Billy Rose’s Jumbo.” As usual, it’s just one of several great Warner Archive titles this month – collections dedicated to James Cagney and Gene Kelly, the Bette Davis-Olivia de Havilland melodrama “It’s Love I’m After” and the Marx Brothers farce “At the Circus” also come highly recommended. —JH

Available November 18

“Berberian Sound Studio” (IFC, Blu-ray)

We have British filmmaker Peter Strickland to thank for bringing the giallo back into the popular imagination—or at least the contemporary cult film—with films like “In Fabric” and “Flux Gourmet.” But his seriously creepy 2012 Lynch-inspired “Berberian Sound Studio,” starring Toby Jones as a mild-mannered sound engineer assigned to an Italian horror film, is a chilling deconstruction of the genre itself. His character creates squishy foley sounds involving everyday objects to evoke sounds that accompany murder and death, but in the process his mental state deteriorates. Like the film’s narrative, which resolves visually and aurally as his psyche unravels.

If you’re looking for a coherent plot, avoid “Berberian Sound Studio”, but if you want to be steeped in mood, sound and visuals, this is the crimson head trip you need. Available on Blu-ray for the first time thanks to its distributor IFC, the film includes a Strickland-led audio commentary and other goodies that unpack (but don’t really explain, and who would?) the mystery behind the film. —RL

Available November 25

“Death Wish Collection” (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray)

Charles Bronson had been kicking around in supporting roles in classics (“The Great Escape,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” “The Dirty Dozen”) and leading roles in international genre fare for decades when he met director Michael Winner in the early 1970s. With films like “Chato’s Land” and “The Mechanic,” Winner gave Bronson the platform to finally become a major Hollywood star at the box office, a position the actor cemented with his and Winner’s most popular and infamous collaboration, 1974’s “Death Wish.”

A brutally efficient and effective vigilante thriller, “Death Wish” combined artistic rigor with fierce sensationalism to produce one of the most divisive and popular films of its time; it also spawned four sequels, all of which are included here and provide an opportunity to track down one of the weirdest franchises in film history. While the original is clearly the most objectively “good” film, “Death Wish II” contains even more brutal power as well as a fantastic anthropological exploration of the seedy side of Hollywood in the early 1980s, when Bronson’s Paul Kersey migrates from New York to Los Angeles. Subsequent sequels get sillier but funnier, like when Kersey arms a group of retirees with machine guns to take down some local thugs. All five films come with contextual audio commentary for Bronson enthusiasts. —JH

Available November 25

“Eyes Wide Shut” (Criterion Collection, 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

One of the year’s most anticipated Criterion Collection Blu-ray releases, Stanley Kubrick’s swan song “Eyes Wide Shut” comes with a new 4K transfer overseen by cinematographer Larry Smith. Kubrick’s rigidly controlled but enticingly mysterious psychosexual odyssey is known to be one of the longest film productions ever, with just over a year spent at Pinewood Studios meticulously recreating a dreamlike version of New York City.

But it’s also notable for seemingly putting the marriage of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, here as a doctor and his wife trying to overcome each other’s jealousy of their potential adultery, on trial. The film opened in theaters in 1999 and in its marketing boasted unprecedented intimate access to the leads, who then divorced less than two years later. Both give career-defining performances in a film that, despite being frowned upon by critics at the time, has only grown with time. (IndieWire listed “Eyes Wide Shut” as The best movie of the 1990s.)

The Criterion edition features new interviews with DP Smith, as well as stagehand and second unit director Lisa Leone, and archivist Georgina Orgill, as well as archival documentaries and press materials. The new transfer raised some eyebrows on social media for its color grading; let’s see for ourselves in time for the holidays. And “Eyes Wide Shut” is one of the best Christmas movies ever. —RL

Available November 25