On the Shelf: ‘Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps,’ and ‘Weapons’ Arrive on 4K Blu-Ray This Week
Three major 2025 releases highlight the releases coming home on physical media this week, featuring one of the best films of the year. First up is the latest, and potentially last, entry into the Mission Impossible franchise, The Final Reckoning, which finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) doing everything he can to stop The Entity from taking over the planet and releasing it into nuclear annihilation. At the same time, Hunt, alongside his IMF team, but stop Gabriel (Esai Morales) from his plans in assisting The Entity, forcing Ethan to confront his past, as well as every Mission and moment leading up to the climax of this film. If you are looking for some of the best action sequences of the year, then look no further than here because it’s a Mission film so of course the action is insane, with Cruise putting his life on the line to entertain the hell out of the audience, even if the script for this film is bogged down by too much exposition, and not every set piece works as effectively as other entries in the franchise. But the final 45 minutes of the film, involving Ethan chasing down Gabriel in two airplanes is worth seeing this film in glorious 4K for. Per her review on the site from earlier this year, Karen Peterson wrote The Final Reckoning “may not reach the heights of some of its predecessors, but if this is really the end, it is a worthy finale to one of the best spy/action franchises ever made.” I more or less agreed with her assessment per my ranking piece on the franchise where I stated that The Final Reckoning “sends the franchise out on more of a polite shrug than a disappointing whimper or grand triumph,” but one I’m excited to watch again now that it’s making its way home this week.
Next up is another summer blockbuster, this time from Marvel as the MCU brings in their iconic first family to the franchise in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Setting the film in an alternative universe to the main Marvel storyline, The Fantastic Four (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn making up the team) are Earth’s only superheroes, and they are about to face their most daunting, dangerous challenge yet. When a ravenous space god called Galactus and his herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) come to their planet looking to destroy it, it’s up to the family to come up with a way to save Earth before it’s consumed into nothingness. While the four attempt in trying to get this group of hero’s story told, Marvel does the best job making this entry feel like it’s something fresh while tied to their overall machine of projects, mostly because the cast is incredible working together. In his review from earlier this year, Trace Sauveur wrote that First Steps “is an entertaining vision of a world where superhero movies clearing the thresholds for making engaging blockbusters is something of a rule, rather than an exception.” Add it to your Marvel collections this week, and hope we get more films like this in the future from the MCU. This will also become essential viewing once Avengers: Doomsday comes out next year, so get it to prepare for that as well.
Next up is from Warner Brothers, who is having one hell of a year at the movies in 2025. There latest home release is the horror masterpiece Weapons, director Zach Cregger’s second feature film, which follows the aftermath of a strange event that rocked a small town where 17 children mysteriously leave their homes in the middle of the night and are never seen again. Evoking great horror traditions, while also some splashes of Stand by Me, Magnolia, Rosemary’s Baby, and more, Cregger created something unique, original, thought-provoking, and special that’s rarely seen any more in modern filmmaking. Equally hilarious, cringe-worthy, frightening, and engrossing, Weapons is a must own, must see film that will leave you thinking for days after seeing it. Our site review, writer Griffin Schiller stated it best, Weapons is “a bona fide horror masterpiece, easily staking its claim as the best film of the year,” and showcases why “Zach Cregger emerges definitively as a vital cinematic voice, boldly confronting uncomfortable truths and societal hypocrisies.” If you buy one film this week, this is the one to get.
Speaking of Warner Brothers, arriving from their archive are three collections of some of the famous actresses in Hollywood history; Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Judy Garland. In Crawford’s collection, it not only features a Best Picture winner in Grand Hotel, which is still the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category, but also features her first Best Actress win for her role in Possessed. Alongside those two iconic films, the collection also features the comedy classic, The Women, and the drama, The Damned Don’t Cry, another celebrated performance by Crawford. For the Davis Collection, her films include her Best Actress win for Jezebel from 1938, as well as her Oscar nominated work for The Letter and Dark Victory, as well as the underrated gem of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. This collection is vital in showing the range and versatility within Davis’s career, with most of these titles arriving on Blu-ray for the first time. As for the Garland collection, classics like Strike Up the Band, Meet Me in St. Louis are combined with unseen classics like Summer Stock, Girl Crazy, and In the Good Old Summertime to make up a great selection of her films. But the biggest reason to nab this set is to also get your hands on Garland’s best work of her career, and the best performance of all these collections in her version of A Star is Born with the legendary James Mason. If you love Actresses and classic Hollywood, these three collections are essential buys for you this week.
Other Notable Releases for the Week of August 25, 2025 include:
Back to the Future (1985, 4K Blu-ray, Universal Studios)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-2024, Blu-ray, Warner Bros)
The Bone Collector (1999, 4K Blu-ray, Kino Lorber)
Eyes Without a Face (1960, 4K Blu-ray, Criterion)
Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection (1932-1939, Blu-ray, Warner Archive Collection)
Jacob’s Ladder (1990, 4K Blu-ray, Lionsgate Limited Exclusive SteelBook)
Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975, 4K Blu-ray, Kino Lorber)
Peanuts: 75th Anniversary Ultimate TV Specials Collection (1960-2011, Blu-ray, Warner Brothers)
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