On the Shelf: ‘Casino,’ ‘Out of Africa,’ ‘Red Planet,’ ‘Rent,’ ‘A Better Tomorrow’ Trilogy, and New Criterions Arrive on 4K Blu-ray Releases for Week of November 17
An absolute stacked week of physical media releases arriving for the first time on 4K. First up is a quartet of films celebrating their anniversary, dating back as far as 1985, with the closest one being just twenty years ago in 2005. Starting with the eldest film of the group is Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa, which is a sweeping romantic epic that follows a Danish baroness/plantation owner (Meryl Streep) who has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited hunter of big-game (Robert Redford). While it might not be one of the strongest Best Picture winners of all time, it was one of the defining films of 1985, grossing over $200 million worldwide and taking home seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Pollack. If you are in the mood to see two movie stars fall in love on the big screen, and want a piece of Oscar history, grab you copy this week. Flash forward ten years, and the next release celebrates 30 years as Martin Scorsese’s Casino arrives on 4K in a limited edition steel book cover built for the Las Vegas nightlife. Reuniting with Goodfellas screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, Scorsese’s crime epic follows two men, a casino executive and a Mafia enforcer, who are competing for power and control of the largest gambling empire in the United States, and keeping pace with the fas- paced lifestyle it’s associated with. Also reuniting with actors Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, featuring an all-time performance from Sharon Stone (who received an Oscar nomination for her role as Ginger McKenna), Casino has become an underrated gem within Scorsese’s vast, celebrated filmography, but it not one to miss if you love the master of cinema, so add it to your collection; you won’t regret it.
For the more recent anniversary titles, we start with a look at our friends over at Arrow Video, and their release of sci-fi action thriller, Red Planet. Starring a magnificent cast that includes Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker, and Terence Stamp, Red Planet follows a team of astronauts who search for solutions to save a dying Earth by searching on the planet Mars, only to have the mission go terribly awry over the course of the film. As films do when time factors in and the dust settles from the initial reviews, Red Planet has become a little bit of a nostalgic cult classic for a section of the millennial, and one that’s be reevaluated since the passing of Kilmer, so it’s nice to see Arrow take care this title by bringing it home for everyone with special features that include a brand new interview with the film’s visual effects supervisor Jeffrey A. Okun, a brand new interview with helmet and suits designer Steve Johnson, and a brand new visual retrospective with film critic Heath Holland. Rounding out the anniversary titles is Rent, the film adaptation from 2005, based on Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical, which is one of the longest running shows on Broadway. Set in New York City’s gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. “Measuring their lives in love,” these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic. Directed by Chris Columbus and starring Rosario Dawson, Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp and Tracie Thoms, it’s an essential musical to have and will get you in the mood to sing as Wicked For Good lands in theaters on Friday.
Two major box sets arrive this week, starting with the A Better Tomorrow trilogy from Shout Factory as part of their Hong Kong Cinema Classics’ series. Directed by John Woo and Tsui Hark, the series follows a death-hardened cop who battles the Hong Kong underworld, including his own brother. At a critical point, he has to join the bad guys, who are involved with his former partner in crime, and bring on his own brand of justice. Featuring an insanely detailed, committed performance from Chow Yun-Fat in each film, these films introduced the world to Woo’s “heroic violence” era of his career while carrying the theme of loyalties between men shattered by a violent world that forces them apart. Only through sacrifice can honor be attained, but this series is a must own for anyone who appreciates wonderfully layered Hong Kong cinema.
The other box-set is a new entry to the Eclipse series at Criterion following the early work of director Abbas Kiarostami, Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami—Early Shorts and Features. Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. In doing this, he created and crafted some of his most foundation work, which includes his first short Bread and Alley, and other gems like Experience, The Traveler, and the piece of perfection that is Homework. If you are a fan of the acclaimed director, you’re going to want to explore this set of 17 films.
Rounding out the week are two more films from the Criterion Collection that are classic essentials making their way to the shelves on 4K for the first time with Éland Hell’s Angels. For the former, Él is a brilliant surrealist masterpiece from Luis Buñuel, which follows an expressionistically stylized nightmare in which a young woman (Delia Garcés) discovers that the outward sophistication of her new husband (Arturo de Córdova) masks disturbing depths of jealousy and paranoia. This film stands as a massive statement within his career, one that highlights a vivid portrayal of society’s inability to restrain the irrational urges of the human soul. And for Hell’s Angels, director Howard Hughes broke all the rules of the time to make this monumental feat; an exhilarating epic that’s both known for its daredevil aerial sequences and nervy pre-Code punch. The product of a notoriously long and dangerous production that resulted in the deaths of multiple crew members (mostly highlighted in Scorsese’s The Aviator, Hell’s Angels broke new technical ground, making use of early sound and color technologies, and capturing some of the most thrilling dogfight scenes ever filmed. You can go and grab these and the Eclipse series now at your local Barnes and Noble or online on their website since they are doing their annual fall sale and these are must own features of cinema.
Other Notable Releases for the Week of August 25, 2025 include:
Doris Day Collection (1948-1962, Blu-ray, Warner Bros.)
Gene Kelly Collection (1942-1952, Blu-ray, Warner Bros.)
James Cagney Collection (1931-1949, Blu-ray, Warner Bros.)
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