picks

Physical media culture is alive and thriving thanks to the home video tastemakers hailing everywhere from The Criterion Collection to Kino Lorber and the Warner Archive Collection. Each month, IndieWire highlights the best recent and upcoming Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K releases for cinephiles to own now — and to bring ballast and permanence to your moviegoing at a time when streaming windows on classic movies close just as soon as they open.

The gift-giving season officially begins this month with the release of Criterion‘s massive Wes Anderson boxed set, a 20-disc behemoth sure to pop up on many cinephiles’ holiday wish lists this year. Yet it’s a sign of how robust the world of physical media remains that the Wes Anderson package is just one of many indispensable releases dropping in September; we’ve also got a Criterion upgrade of a Kurosawa favorite, a new cut of an obscure Sylvester Stallone vehicle, and Jack Nicholson’s criminally underrated “Chinatown” sequel “The Two Jakes.”

Add to that a pristine transfer of an overlooked Walter Hill gem, a collection devoted to one of classic Hollywood’s greatest stars, and a new restoration of Victor Sjöström’s silent masterpiece “He Who Gets Slapped.” And let’s not forget to mention the physical media premiere of one of this year’s best movies, “Materialists,” with illuminating supplementary features.

IndieWire picks our eight favorite new physical releases for September 2025, below.

“Errol Flynn Collection” (Warner Archive, Blu-ray)

Another exquisite set from Warner Archive following this year’s earlier Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Elizabeth Taylor collections, this six-film package provides a rousing crash course in the work of one of the greatest action stars of his era. Flynn’s most famous film, Michael Curtiz’s influential “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” is here in a dazzling transfer that showcases all its Technicolor glory; so is one of the actor’s best movies, Raoul Walsh’s epic World War II adventure film “Objective, Burma!” The collection also includes another Curtiz swashbuckler, “The Sea Hawk”; the more somber WWII drama “Edge of Darkness”; and a late entry from Flynn’s days at Warner Bros., “The Adventures of Don Juan.” The weirdest and most fascinating film in the set is “Santa Fe Trail,” a Curtiz-helmed Western that imagines future Civil War enemies Jeb Stuart (Flynn) and George Armstrong Custer (Ronald Reagan) as military school pals competing for the affections of an heiress played by Olivia de Havilland. This is just one of several highly recommended releases from Warner Archives this month; they’ve also got terrific collections devoted to Greta Garbo and 50s sci-fi, as well as new remasters of the pre-code gangster classic “The Beast of the City” and the blaxploitation favorite “Black Samson.”

Available September 2

“Rebel” Director’s Cut (Giant Pictures, Blu-ray)

Originally titled “No Place to Hide” when it was released in 1973, this micro-budget feature from director Robert Schnitzer gave Sylvester Stallone his first starring role as an anti-war activist — yet it’s been virtually impossible to see for decades due to the vicissitudes of independent filmmaking. Retitled “Rebel” and re-released after “Rocky” made Stallone in 1976, the film made the rounds on videocassette and television but never got the attention it deserved as a richly detailed portrait of one of the worst moments in American history and its impact on people fighting for what they believed in. For this Blu-ray release Schnitzer has remastered “Rebel” in 4K, remixed the sound, and made subtle adjustments to fix issues that had always bothered him. The result provides an opportunity to discover one of the great unsung independent films of its era, a movie filled with electrifying New York location shooting, political urgency, and sophisticated moral inquiry.

Available September 2

“The Two Jakes” (Kino Lorber, 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Jack Nicholson stepped into the director’s chair for this sequel to “Chinatown,” which met with mixed reviews and tepid box office upon its release in 1990 but is, in fact, every bit the artistic equal to Roman Polanski’s masterpiece. Broader in its tonal range, subtler in its observations, and more adventurous in its narrative structure than its predecessor, it’s a messier movie than the one concocted by Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne in 1974, but it yields even greater pleasures for viewers willing to accept its challenges. In his richly complex portrait of Jake Gittes learning to live — or not — with the tragedy that defined his life after the events of “Chinatown,” Nicholson reaches his apex as both actor and director.

Available September 2

“Undisputed” (Kino Lorber, 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

When Walter Hill‘s 2000 science fiction film “Supernova” was taken out of his hands during editing (he ended up signing the film under a pseudonym), he wasn’t sure if he wanted to make movies anymore. Thankfully, for those of us who treasure the lean, smart genre films (“48HRS,” “Streets of Fire,” “Johnny Handsome”) in which Hill specializes, he eventually changed his mind and decided to go back to basics for one of his best and most underrated films. After the large scale and abundant visual effects of “Supernova,” Hill got his creative mojo back (with help from co-screenwriter David Giler) with this return to the kind of modest but muscular character-driven entertainment that began his career. Like his debut, “Hard Times,” it’s a boxing picture: a riff on the real-life story of Mike Tyson, in which a heavyweight champion (Ving Rhames) goes to jail for rape and finds himself up against the prison’s reigning undefeated fighter (Wesley Snipes). Hill and Giler skillfully avoid virtually every sports movie cliché while still delivering the genre’s rousing satisfactions — this is a spectacularly fun movie in spite of its often grim subject matter. This long overdue 4K upgrade includes interviews with Hill, Snipes, and Rhames, and a new audio commentary with film historian Mike Leeder and filmmaker Matt Routledge.

Available September 2

“He Who Gets Slapped” (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray)

Victor Sjöström is best known to contemporary cinephiles for his memorable performance in Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries,” but decades before that 1957 masterpiece he was directing silent films of exceptional subtlety and lyricism. This atmospheric 1924 thriller about a humiliated clown (Lon Chaney) plotting revenge against his tormentor is one of Sjöström’s most celebrated works, and the Flicker Alley Blu-ray offers up a brand new restoration of a film never before available in HD. Chaney gives a nuanced, uncharacteristically subdued performance as “HE,” the tortured circus performer, and this Blu-ray offers up an analysis of Chaney’s work via an audio commentary by makeup artist and Chaney enthusiast Michael F. Blake. Further context is provided by a brand-new documentary on the early days of MGM, where Louis B. Mayer green-lit “He Who Gets Slapped” as the new studio’s first film. (It didn’t end up being released first after Mayer held it for the lucrative Christmas holiday, but it was the first film to sport MGM’s lion mascot in its opening.)

Available September 9

“High and Low” (Criterion, 4K UHD)

Interest in this Akira Kurosawa classic has surged with the release of Spike Lee’s remake “Highest 2 Lowest,” and Criterion’s shimmering 4K upgrade is the perfect way to experience it. A bifurcated story that spends its first half in the “high” environs of upper class industrialist Toshiro Mifune before shifting gears to the “low” city life of a kidnapper who upends his life, this 1963 adaptation of Ed McBain’s crime novel “King’s Ransom” goes both broad and deep — it’s a sweeping portrait of post-war Japan as well as a meticulously detailed character study. And it’s one hell of an entertaining modern noir, kinetically directed by Kurosawa with a total mastery of the expansive TohoScope frame. The Criterion edition is essential viewing not only for the film itself but for the exceptional supplementary features, the best of which is an insight-packed audio commentary by film scholar Stephen Prince, who brilliantly breaks down Kurosawa’s approach to lenses, camera movement, composition, and editing.

Available September 9

“Materialists” (A24, Blu-ray)

Celine Song’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut feature “Past Lives” is the best kind of second film, a movie that both deepens the ideas of its predecessor while finding more varied means of expression and new areas for further inquiry. “Materialists” is as airy and expansive as “Past Lives” was hermetically sealed and claustrophobic; it’s got the effervescent charm of early Nora Ephron, but the exploration of how class, culture, and romance intersect is more complex — and ultimately more satisfying — than anything you’ll find in “Sleepless in Seattle” or “You’ve Got Mail.” Song’s visual taste is exquisite; her talent for finding the most felicitous camera angle and her eye for edits that convey a multitude of emotions makes her a kind of modern-day Ernst Lubitsch, and “Materialists” is a rom-com (yes, it is a rom-com, contrary to what some of my colleagues have argued) every bit as romantic, funny, and clear-eyed as that master’s best work. Special features on the Blu-ray include a commentary with Celine Song, an in-depth making-of featurette, and a composer deep dive with Japanese Breakfast.

Available September 9

“The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years” (Criterion, 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

To call this generously appointed and handsomely packaged collection a crash course in the films of writer-director Wes Anderson isn’t really doing it justice; with over 25 hours of special features and essays spread across 10 illustrated books, it’s one of the most comprehensive boxed sets ever dedicated to a single filmmaker. Containing all 10 of Anderson’s features from “Bottle Rocket” to “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun,” the package is stuffed to the hilt with audio commentaries, interviews, documentaries, deleted scenes, auditions, short films, home movies, commercials, storyboards, animation tests, archival recordings, still photographs, and visual essays devoted to one of the most original voices in contemporary world cinema.

Available September 30