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. After a weaker month, Criterion is back with a vengeance, releasing a ton of great films and a classy must-have collection for Wes Anderson lovers. September 2025’s Blu-ray and 4K releases include a mock doc gamechanger, animated marvels, and some a couple cult classics. Read on and find films from Anderson, Rob Reiner, Yorgos Lanthimos, Akira Kurosawa, and more.
On the heels of Spike Lee’s Americanized remake, Akira Kurosawa’s incredibly blocked crime thriller gets a restoration from Criterion. A class-driven kidnapping gone wrong is told through frames stuffed to the brim with bodies, crammed in like the slums that sit below the central industrialist’s home on the hill. With included documentaries and interviews, one of the Japanese legend’s best gets the deluxe treatment at a time when popular interest in the noirish tale is at its highest (not lowest).
Following the theatrical release of the long-coming sequel on September 12, the restoration of Rob Reiner’s essential, genre-redefining mock doc returns fake-rock audiences to where it all began for the butt-lovin’ band (and for musician-comedians Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer). With an hour-and-a-half of outtakes, enough for a full feature, and three audio commentaries (featuring the cast both in and out of character), even the extras are just a bit louder than you’d expect.
Night Of The Juggler 4K
Available September 16, 2025
Though the new 4K restoration of this ’70s cult classic played in theaters earlier this year, it’s also coming home in the same format. A new commentary track and a few new interviews supplement James Brolin’s rampage through NYC in pursuit of the madman (Cliff Gorman) who took his daughter. With a deep supporting cast and grimy city location shooting, this William P. McGivern adaptation shouldn’t be missed.
Flow 4K
Available September 23, 2025
The recent Oscar-winning arthouse update to Homeward Bound—just kidding, this animal survival story is far more beautiful, apocalyptic, and quiet—gets the high-quality home treatment alongside one of animator Gints Zilbalodis’ earlier projects, his 2019 debut Away. Packaged together and featuring loads of behind-the-scenes material from the Latvian filmmaker, this release represents the first big surge in a new wave of DIY animation from open-source software. And, if you’re just looking for its more elemental pleasures, there’s a very, very cute cat making his way through a cataclysmic flood.
The Wes Anderson Archive 4K
Available September 30, 2025
From Bottle Rocket to The French Dispatch, this massive (and of course, scrupulously designed) collection of Wes Anderson movies contains a quarter-century’s worth of work in 10 films. A set of 4K editions in uniform orange, green, and clothbound khaki, this mid-career retrospective also includes a full day’s worth of special features (25 hours) and 10 illustrated books. The price tag is hefty, but this is a fittingly fastidious archive of an auteur’s evolution, from scrappy indie crime filmmaker to purveyor of artisanal tableaux.
Dogtooth 4K
Available September 30, 2025
After two previous features, Yorgos Lanthimos broke out with this Cannes-winning, Oscar-nominated provocation, welcoming international audiences to the Greek Weird Wave. Now Kino Lorber is giving the dystopic vision of purposeful suburban isolation as crisp a shine as ever. Full of taboos and hilarious misinformation, Dogtooth benefitted from being the first collaboration between Lanthimos and his frequent co-writer Efthimis Filippou, and the bright, chipper aesthetic only makes the paranoid family dramedy encased within more bold.
Treasures Of Soviet Animation: Volume Two
Available September 30, 2025
It wouldn’t be fun to just focus on the big names this month, so why not check out a wild card? Three films from Soviet-Armenian director Lev Atamanov—The Snow Queen, The Key, and The Scarlet Flower—have been collected by Deaf Crocodile, all about an hour long and featuring Hayao Miyazaki’s favorite film (The Snow Queen). Two new video essays and three commentary tracks accompany the films to add context to these animated deep cuts. “Had I not one day seen The Snow Queen during a film screening hosted by the company labor union,” Miyazaki said, “I honestly doubt that I would have continued working as an animator.” If it’s good enough for the god of Ghibli, it’s probably good enough for you.
