The best 4K and Blu-ray releases coming out in February 2025
New physical media must-haves include cult comedies, upgraded classics, and a long-absent Godard.
Photo: The Criterion Collection
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