The best 4K and Blu-ray releases coming out in November 2025
New physical media must-haves include a collection from Shudder, a ton of Chow Yun-fat, and 4K restorations of classic comedies, horror, and erotic thrillers.
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’s a bounty of riches on offer this month, especially for those looking to beef up their John Woo collections. November 2025’s Blu-ray and 4K releases include hard copies of some streaming horror hits from Shudder, a restored action trilogy, and a few great 4K upgrades. Read on and find films from Woo, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Joe Dante, and more.
Tony Leung. John Woo. A bunch of babies. A shotgun. Chow Yun-fat playing a cop named Tequila. Everything one needs to know about Hard Boiled, Woo’s big brash masterpiece, is right there on the cover. Restored in 4K by Shout!, which is also releasing Woo’s A Better Tomorrow films as a set this month, this new version comes with a big booklet of goodies, new interviews and commentary tracks (including one from Woo), and some newly translated English subtitles. Anyone who’s seen this film in a less crisp and professional way knows that the subs on some of Woo’s melodramas can be lacking. Now, they’re just as shined-up as the graceful, body-stacking images.
Neil Marshall’s nightmare-inducing spelunking horror gets its due with this Lionsgate restoration, which includes both the theatrical and unrated cuts of the film (which mostly impacts how bleak its ending is). Claustrophobic as all get-out and ever-escalating its scares, The Descent went from Sundance midnight movie to sleeper smash. Seeing its hazy reds and dark blacks in 4K can only make the plight of its poor team of cave-stuck women all the more enthralling.
The Mask 4K
Available November 11, 2025
Somebody stop me (from spending all my money on Arrow limited editions)! A star-making and star-confirming comedy, The Mask‘s goofball ‘toon effects are the main beneficiaries to this new restoration. The other winners? Those who would appreciate tons of new interviews with filmmaker Chuck Russell, never-before-seen dance rehearsal footage, and all the below-the-line love one has come to expect from the folks at the boutique distributor. They named their interview with the film’s editor “Sssssssplicin’!” What’s not to like?
Burden Of Dreams 4K
Available November 11, 2025
In the wake of MegaDoc (itself coming in the shadow of Hearts Of Darkness) comes a restoration of one of the great “filmmaking as disaster” documentaries. Les Blank bore witness to Werner Herzog going nuts in the Amazon during the production of Fitzcarraldo, eventually mirroring the narrative of that fiction by famously having a local crew haul a full-size steamship over a mountain. If you only know Herzog from his voice or his acting cameos, dive into his psyche with one of the boldest looks at directorial bravado out there. But don’t worry, he drops plenty of nihilism too.
Shudder: A Decade Of Fearless Horror
Available November 11, 2025
One of the worst things about straight-to-streaming movies is that they could disappear at any time, at the whims of executives with no qualms about erasing artworks for small changes on a spreadsheet. Though it doesn’t seem like the folks behind Shudder would do such a thing, it’s still heartening to see that they’re releasing a hard-copy Blu-ray collection of some of their best movies. The 10-film pack includes Terrified, The Mortuary Collection, The Dark And The Wicked, V/H/S 94, and Caveat—all totally fine films—but it’s also got a handful of horror bangers: Host, Skinamarink, Late Night With The Devil, In A Violent Nature, and Mad God, the latter being one of the wildest films of any genre to come out in the last decade. Preserving these films on disc is a smart move. Compiling them into a set captures the legacy Shudder is already establishing among its audience.
A Better Tomorrow Trilogy 4K
Available November 18, 2025
Those paying attention during our Action Bracket know that I’ve got a soft spot for the sublime early collaborations of John Woo and Chow Yun-fat, which helped define an entire genre of heroic bloodshed action movies before splintering apart at its end. But even the third movie in this series—which saw producer Tsui Hark take over as director while Woo went off to turn his proposed version of the third film into Bullet In The Head—is suffused with Chow’s cool factor. Whether wielding Woo’s mega-masculine melodrama akimbo or swaggering his way through Tsui’s more politically urgent finale, the franchise’s star is too charming to be consigned to a bad video rip. 4K is the way for these excellent collections of shootouts, roughhousing bromance, and stone-cold charisma.
Eyes Wide Shut 4K
Available November 25, 2025
Thankfully released ahead of Christmas, the horniest holiday movie ever made is coming home in a new digital restoration. Featurettes like Kubrick Remembered, Never Just A Dream, and Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films Of Stanley Kubrick supplement the master’s final film, while new interviews with the cinematographer, set decorator, archivist, and second-unit director bring audiences closer than ever to the ice-cold story of lurid, lonely lust. A wet nightmare of a film, summed up in the bedroom showdowns between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut is a killer cap to Kubrick’s career.
