The best 4K and Blu-ray releases coming out in January 2025
New physical media must-haves include one of 2024’s best films, a handful of greats from Quentin Tarantino, and some under-the-radar oddballs.
Photo: Arrow Video
The theaters might be full of trash, but the January physical media world is thriving. 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. January 2025’s Blu-ray and 4K releases include some classics getting an upgrade for the first time, a pair of sleeper hits from last year, and a few flashy wild cards getting the deluxe treatment from specialty distributors. Read on and find films from Akira Kurosawa, David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, Tarsem Singh, and more.
Seven 4K Steelbook
Available January 7
Seven (or Se7en if you’re nasty) has long been deserving of a high-quality physical release. David Fincher’s post-Alien 3 breakthrough is a film whose grimy, rotten texture you can feel, and when someone as meticulous and hands-on as Fincher personally oversees a restoration, the marriage between look and feel only becomes more intense. As Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman make their way through the deadly sins in a morbid game of cat-and-mouse, viewers may find themselves just as submerged in the moral muck as the cops. This upgrade will also support the film’s brief return to IMAX for its 30th anniversary, which is a cool tie-in that helps overshadow that all the special features on this disc have been previously released. But hey, even if the commentaries and featurettes are old, Seven has never looked this good.
Yojimbo / Sanjuro 4K + Blu-ray
Available January 7
Toshiro Mifune dominates this Criterion combo pack of Yojimbo and Sanjuro, a pair of Akira Kurosawa samurai films, even compared to the rest of the actor-filmmaker’s collaborations. The former is probably more famous in concept, where a nameless drifter saunters into a violence-stricken town a la A Fistful Of Dollars…because Sergio Leone yoinked the plot directly from Kurosawa, eventually losing to the filmmaker in court. The latter film quickly put Mifune back into action as the character simply because Yojimbo had been such a smash. In these films, Kurosawa’s cross-cultural conversation with Hollywood looms large, as the historic East and the mythic West inform one another. As always, Criterion’s extras are a big selling point here, with included documentaries and essays adding historical context and making-of information to a couple genre classics.
The Cell 4K
Available January 21