It’s that time of month again…
Our roundup of new steelbook, Collector’s Edition, 4K and limited edition Blu-ray titles is here for May. As always, release dates are subject to change, so make sure you double check the listings on site – but at that time of writing, you should clear some space on your shelf, as these are all currently scheduled to come your way in the next few weeks.
Here’s your week-by-week rundown of the most noteworthy home entertainment releases of the month.
Monday, 6th May
Paramount
The Zavvi Exclusive 4K steelbook of The Crow was one of our most sought-after launches when we unveiled it earlier this year, and will begin shipping to the lucky fans who managed to nab a pre-order on the week beginning Monday, 6th May. If you missed out, don’t worry; there is a standard 4K edition of the gritty caped crusader movie still available.
A very different 90s cult classic getting a 4K makeover is the coming-of-age comedy Dazed And Confused, which leads May’s batch of Criterion releases. That 70s set movie is complemented by the label’s other launch that day, the 1960s-set teen movie Dogfight, starring River Phoenix.
Somewhat less critically acclaimed is The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, the notorious big-screen adaptation of the trading card game. Arriving on Blu-ray in the UK for the first time, this three-disc Collector’s Edition Blu-ray/DVD Mediabook features a 24-page booklet, and a bonus disc with a documentary celebrating – in their words – “30 years of Garbage”.
Those are four fab releases – but they’re not the Fab Four. If you want the mop-topped lads from Liverpool, then you should seek out Backbeat, the 90s biopic of the Beatles’ early years in Hamburg where they first chased the big time.
Acclaimed by critics at the time, and forever immortalised in the lyrics to Wonderwall by Oasis, this biopic has become increasingly overlooked in recent years. This Blu-ray rerelease should change that.
Monday, 13th May
Paramount
One of the greatest westerns ever made is back for its 55th anniversary, and this 4K restoration has been personally overseen by Martin Scorsese – you don’t get better than that! This Collector’s Edition of Once Upon A Time In The West also includes a poster, six art cards, a collectible “Morton” train sign and a vintage fold out photograph of the rail road; everything you need to bring the old west into your home.
Two very different steelbooks are launching this week, the first of which is Clint Eastwood’s Oscar nominated hit American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper. Not Oscar-nominated (and all the better for it) is The Last Kumite, a deliriously entertaining martial arts movie throwback starring several cult icons of the genre.
Another 4K remaster launching this week is director Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, the steamy 2001 menage-a-trois romance set against the backdrop of the 1968 Paris Riots, in a two-disc special edition loaded with four hours of extras. Finally, there are two releases apiece from the BFI (conspiracy thriller Hidden City, starring Charles Dance, and Japanese classic Floating Clouds), and 88 Films (the British western Hannie Caulder, starring Raquel Welch and Christopher Lee, and The Body Stealers, an under-the-radar 60s sci-fi).
Monday, 20th May
Criterion Collection
Disney are slowly giving their biggest streaming series physical releases, and the MCU’s The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is the latest to get that treatment, in glorious 4K. But this isn’t the only noteworthy 4K release of the week, as Arrow Video are unleashing their remaster of Guillermo Del Toro’s gothic horror Crimson Peak, Criterion are pulling no punches with their Raging Bull rerelease, and finally, we get to turn back the clock with Jake Gyllenhaal in time-loop sci-fi Source Code.
Also dropping this week is the BFI’s new restoration Big Banana Feet, the behind-the-scenes look at Billy Connolly’s 1975 tour of Ireland, a fly-on-the-wall look at a comedy legend on the cusp of global superstardom.
And one more thing… the complete Columbo collection has been remastered and reissued in a 20-disc Blu-ray collection, making for the ultimate binge watch!
Monday, 27th May
Arrow Video
The final week of the month is by far the most stacked with new releases, so let’s kick things off with two very different 4K steelbooks from Paramount; a remaster of sci-fi classic Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, and the physical release of recent music biopic blockbuster Bob Marley: One Love.
Arrow Video are offering up cinematic delights old and new, with the 4K remaster of British gangster classic The Long Good Friday, and a limited-edition Blu-ray of Pandemonium, a surreal French horror anthology that whisks viewers into the hellish unknown. Other titles coming to 4K this week include both Korean zombie flick Train To Busan and its sequel Peninsula, 1994’s Fist Of Legend starring Jet Li, and the stylish Wuxia classic The Valiant Ones, considered to be one of the last great films from the martial arts genre’s first golden age.
The Valiant Ones isn’t the only release from Eureka! Entertainment this week, with George Lazenby intercepting a plot to kill the Queen in action-thriller A Queen’s Ransom, and a trilogy of Yakuza classics arriving in the Prison Walls: Abashiri Prison I-III boxset offering plenty of thrills so good, they’re criminal!
If Lazenby isn’t the only former James Bond you want to see in action, then 88 Films have you covered with Roger Moore in Shout At The Devil, a WWI romp about the plot to destroy a damaged German warship. Finally, there are three Collector’s Edition releases from Radiance; Mario Bava’s unholy sci-fi/horror hybrid Planet Of The Vampires, the Shinobi trilogy of samurai classics, and the recent magical realist masterwork Trenque Lauqen, a weird-and-wonderful epic from Argentina that featured in several critics’ best-of-the-year lists in 2023.
Browse and pre-order all upcoming home entertainment releases.
