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

New physical media must-haves include one of the year's best new releases, a brilliant B-movie, a set of giallos, and classic Ghibli and Western films.

By Jacob Oller  |  July 1, 2025 | 10:00am
Photo: GKIDS
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The best 4K and Blu-ray releases coming out in July 2025
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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. There are plenty of big 4K releases hitting this month, but some are too good to pass up. Also, the Wallace & Gromit collection that featured in our holiday gift guide last year is now coming out with fewer odds and ends, but bears mentioning nonetheless—it’s Wallace & Gromit! July 2025’s Blu-ray and 4K releases include one of the year’s best new releases, a brilliant B-movie, a set of giallos, and classic Ghibli and Western films. Read on and find films from Stanley Kubrick, Ryan Coogler, Mike Nichols, Mario Bava, and more.

Barry Lyndon 4K

Available July 8, 2025

The most lush film Stanley Kubrick ever made, serious without abandoning silliness and flooded with flickering candlelight, Barry Lyndon is getting a visual boost from Criterion this month. The unlikely rise and fall of its central scoundrel (Ryan O’Neal) occupies the highs and lows of 1700s British society, the narrative as out of control as the images conveying it are meticulous. “Every Frame A Painting” doesn’t mean anything until applied to this movie. The Oscar-winning work by cinematographer John Alcott utilized lenses originally developed for NASA to use in the Moon landing—in case you were wondering where that whole “Kubrick faked it” rumor came from.

Sinners 4K SteelBook

Available July 8, 2025

Not only is Sinners an early contender for the upper tier of this year’s new releases, but filmmaker Ryan Coogler has been pushing the technical behind-the-scenes details as marketing selling points—something that’s extending to the special features in this home release. Aside from zipping back and forth between aspect ratios to enhance the heat of its Southern-fried musical tale of bloodsuckers and racists (and racist bloodsuckers), Sinners is bringing lots of “how it all happened” featurettes to its physical package, explaining everything from the shooting style to the twin performance of Michael B. Jordan.

Grave Of The Fireflies SteelBook

Available July 8, 2025

After seeing eBay prices jacked into the stratosphere, the saddest Ghibli film (and one of the saddest movies ever made) is getting a nice accessible home release. Isao Takahata’s 1988 adaptation of Akiyuki Nosaka’s semi-autobiographical short story is deeply tragic—about young siblings trying to survive amid WWII bombing raids—and, like the best Ghibli films, transposes the heightened experiences of childhood with visual maturity and narrative grace. Just have some tissues nearby.

Shane 4K

Available July 15, 2025

A truly classic Western in both style and mythic scope, Shane is a black-and-white morality tale of hardscrabble working folks versus brigands and cattle barons. Doomed heroes grit their teeth and do the right thing, all captured in bright, Oscar-winning cinematography from Loyal Griggs. Kino Lorber adds a few audio commentaries to its new 4K, giving some added context to a film that, at first blush, seems to simply be the platonic ideal of this kind of genre story.

The Stuff 4K

Available July 22, 2025

Arrow gives B-movie master Larry Cohen’s delicious goo an upgrade 40 years after the cult classic oozed into theaters. Cohen brings back Q: The Winged Serpent star Michael Moriarty for his horror-satire, to investigate The Stuff that everyone keeps shoving into their gobs. The film about a tasty viral sensation (that might be alive) is thoroughly ’80s, deeply silly, and yet more clever than it has any right to be. This release includes a new commentary, featurette, booklet, and some other supplementary goodies you’ve come to expect from the boutique.

Carnal Knowledge 4K

Available July 22, 2025

A pair of terrible men (Jack Nicholson, Arthur Garfunkel) plow through director Mike Nichols and writer Jules Feiffer’s stinging take on aging sexists, leaving Candice Bergen and Ann-Margret (and Carol Kane and Rita Moreno) in their wake. Less a sex comedy and more a sex tragedy, Carnal Knowledge is still funny, but depressing because everyone knows a condescending lothario on his way out who mirrors one of these two. Supplemented by a “new program with Mike Nichols biographer Mark Harris and film critic Dana Stevens,” commentary track, and interview, the Criterion upgrade offers up an underseen Nichols film that still feels relevant despite its acidic and acid-drenched take on its era.

The Mario Bava Collection Blu-ray

Available July 31, 2025

Posters! Booklets! Thirteen films from the warped mind of Mario Bava! Filled with new commentaries and packaged in a beautiful box, this set—which includes Black Sunday, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Black Sabbath, Kill, Baby, Kill!, Knives Of The Avenger, Five Dolls For An August Moon, Roy Colt And Winchester Jack, Four Times That Night, A Bay Of Blood, Baron Blood, Lisa And The Devil, and Kidnapped—is basically a no-brainer for those looking to immersive themselves in giallo, unless you’re waiting for 4Ks which have yet to be announced. Nothing wrong with wanting these films to look their best, but if you want them all and you want them now, in all their bloody, stabby, oddball glory, this is a solid collection.

 
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