The 9 Best Releases on Blu-rays and 4K UHD of March 2023

March is packed with underrated movies lovingly transferred to Blu-ray and 4K UHD. One of my 10 favorite movies, a pop-rock musical set in an alternate reality New York City, opens mid-month and is backed by fantastic retro horror, a rarely printed John Woo film, a time capsule from the 90s, and a Hitchcockian cult classic from the 2000s.

Each month, in an effort to help you find your next favorite records, we curate a list of our most anticipated releases. We haven’t had a chance to test these discs yet, but if you’d like to get the formal nod, don’t worry—we’ll begin our rolling list of the best Blu-ray and 4K UHD discs of the year in the coming months. But each of these releases has potential and comes from a label we’ve enjoyed in the past.

Our most anticipated album of March 2023

streets of Fire (4K UHD + Blu-ray) — March 14, 2023

Walter Hill’s Lost Masterpiece streets of Fire You don’t feel so lost these days. Thanks to a couple of limited Blu-ray releases, more regular appearances in blockbuster theaters, and a fast-paced reputation on Letterboxd, the ’80s pop-rock musical has long been given the cult classic status it deserves. a long time.

The film has Diane Lane belting out rock anthems and Willem Dafoe with a fit I can only describe as a rockabilly leather twist. But the reason to watch this movie over and over again is the guitar-wrecking first 10 minutes, and the last. Hill shoots concerts as well as any of the best music documentaries, turning your living room into the best seat in the house.

This album, by Shout Select, includes two documentary feature films and a bunch of other retro feature films, like music videos and on-air promos.

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The big Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases for March 2023

Image: Lionsgate

John Wick 1-3 Stash Book Collection—February 28, 2023

The John Wick movies are an absolute blast, and I can’t wait for the fourth to arrive later in March. Until then, we’ve got this awesome new Steelbook set to help us out, in a “hidden book” box that’s a replica of Wick himself from John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. The book looks like a huge Russian tome, with religious iconography on the cover and a few pages of text inside. Once you leaf through enough, you’ll find three steelbooks hidden inside, along with a couple of photographs of John’s long-lost loved ones.

The set includes all three films, behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, and audio commentary from Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski. —Pete Volk

the house that screamed (Blu-ray) — March 7, 2023

I hadn’t heard of this movie before popping it into my Blu-ray player; I am now a convert. What looks like a tacky schoolgirls-in-trouble thriller is actually a surprisingly restrained mix of Hitchcockian psychosexual mystery and gothic horror.

Director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador creates a 19th century French boarding school that feels like the most beautiful and welcoming prison. The doors and windows are always closed. Girls close to the headmistress serve as spies and enforcers. And the few men who have occasional reasons to visit the grounds have questionable motives, which is a problem when girls start to disappear.

phenomena (4K UHD + Blu-ray) — March 14, 2023

Dario Argento’s proto-slasher has a surprising amount in common with the house that screamed: the European all-girls boarding school, the bewildering local men, and the new girl who seems all too aware that things are about to go very, very wrong. For all the similarities, the differences are just as stark: Jennifer Connelly plays the daughter of a world-renowned actor, befriends a hyper-intelligent chimpanzee, and communicates telepathically with a cloud-sized swarm of flies.

This special edition includes three cuts from the film. I recommend starting with the longer cut, the Italian version. The shortest cut, the Creepers cut, removes so much from the film that ironically you would have to have seen other versions for it to make any sense.

The prince of Egypt (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital Copy) — March 14, 2023

In 2018, we spoke with director Brenda Chapman to The prince of Egypt20th anniversary of. “We were trying to make movies that didn’t feel like they were just for kids,” Chapman said. “We wanted to make movies that the whole world would see. We wanted to say that we can do a drama in animation and it’s not just where parents drop their kids off at the theater like they used to, or just use them as babysitters. We wanted to do something that would reach more adults.”

The result, a DreamWorks Animation musical adaptation of the Book of Exodus, is a bold, beautiful epic condensed into a lightning-fast 99 minutes. Hopefully this 4K version will give it the attention to audio and visual fidelity it deserves.

The set includes a behind-the-scenes look, a couple of feature films, and a director’s commentary with Chapman.

last hurray for chivalry (Blu-ray) — March 14, 2023

John Woo finally returns to the Criterion Collection, though not with the movies fans would expect. Woo’s Iconic Couple Criterion DVD, Hard and The murdererThey have been out of stock for years. Rather than move them to modern formats, Criterion has produced a surprise 2K digital restoration of Woo’s period film. last hurray for chivalry. The drama precedes Woo’s gun-laden action movies, eschewing them for swords, and has been hard to watch in the US, let alone in high-res.

The Criterion edition includes an audio interview with Woo and a new English subtitle localization.

Red eye (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital Copy) — March 21, 2023

After releasing the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream series, director Wes Craven briefly veered into thrillers with the delightfully watchable film. Red eye. On a cross-country flight, Cillian Murphy kidnaps Rachel McAdams and threatens to kill her father, Brian Cox. The only way out: political assassination!

The two-disc set includes new commentary from the film’s editor, Patrick Lussier; a couple of new feature films; a making-of; a joke roll; and an old comment from the late Wes Craven.

party girl (Blu-ray) — March 28, 2023

My first job out of college was as a PA on a canceled sitcom. Every day he took the subway to the office in Queens, stocked the writers’ dining room, and cleaned up after Parker Posey’s small but digestive dog. At first, I hated it. How dehumanizing. But over time, I realized something very important about this concert. A privilege, if you will. I got to see Parker Posey’s work, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. And dear reader, she is just as wonderful and mystifying as each of her characters. Years later, I lived in a small apartment in her neighborhood. We often ate brunch at the same place. He left his bag there three times and I handed it back to him, each time saying, “Oh, thank you! How did I forget? it’s?”

Why did I run into Parker Posey so much? Lower Manhattan operates under its own cosmic laws! Which is, in a small part, the point of this movie.

Anyway, party girl It’s Parker Posey’s latest film, and it’s in the running to be the most celluloid-committed ’90s movie. It is like Girls through the lens of Gen X. I adore it and I’m so happy to see it get a promising limited edition Blu-ray. Finally, I get to see her killer costume design in HD.

Violent Streets: The Umberto Lenzi/Tomas Milian Collection (Blu-ray) — March 28, 2023

I have never seen a more brutal and disgusting crime film than Umberto Lenzi’s. Almost human. Where most genre entries focus on the detective, Lenzi focuses the bulk of this all-noir film in the shadow of sociopathic Giulio Sacchi (played by Tomas Milian). Sacchi sucks as a petty crook, so he makes the bold decision to jump straight to the crime boss. Turns out, that’s not so hard for a killer with no soul and no sense of shame. Sacchi’s version of Milian is terrifying, echoing Pinkie in Graham Greene. brighton rockand apparently set the stage visually and stylistically for De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi driverwhich would debut two years after this film.

Violent Streets contains Almost human, along with four additional collaborations between the director and the actor, a couple of commentaries, over a dozen interviews, some soundtrack CDs, and more. It’s an excellent entry into the Poliziotteschi/Euro crime subgenre. Just be prepared to be amazed.