Each month The A.V. Club does our part to keep you up to date on the best of what’s coming out on Blu-ray and 4K UHD, which is especially important as streaming services become less and less reliable homes for films worth watching. Arrow and Criterion pull out the stops this month, but smaller players like Powerhouse continue to make a name for themselves with their selective releases. April 2026’s Blu-ray and 4K releases include a Japanese crime double feature, a Joe Dante classic, and Lee Marvin at his brutal best. Read on and find films from Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Rollin, and more.
Wandering Ginza Butterfly Collection
Available April 7, 2026
Partially because star Meiko Kaji is coming to Chicago for Beyond Fest, it’s a great time to check out a shiny double feature of her non-Lady Snowblood and Female Prisoner Scorpion films. With new English subtitles for both Wandering Ginza Butterfly and its sequel She-Cat Gambler, new commentaries and interviews, and—as is natural from an Arrow release—a nice booklet, this sleek release is a great way to dive into the world of ’70s Tokyo crime movies. Kaji’s “Red Cherry Blossom” beats the hell out of a ton of yakuza, sometimes alongside Sonny Chiba, as she teaches Tokyo’s Ginza district not to mess with her.
Peter Bogdanovich, who introduces this new 4K restoration, describes the invisible “Lubitsch touch” as a way of conveying intense attraction through subtle, offhanded suggestion, something at the heart of Ernst Lubitsch’s brisk pre-Code comedy Trouble In Paradise. Criterion offers a new video essay by David Cairns and booklet from Farran Smith Nehme to supplement this cheeky, thieving love triangle, but seeing an 82-minute Lubitsch gem in a resolution as crisp as its filmmaking is treat enough.
Filmmaker John Boorman broke out with his 1967 Richard Stark/Donald Westlake adaptation Point Blank, teaming up with a never-better Lee Marvin to make a blistering and psychedelic Los Angeles noir. The Criterion 4K offers a new featurette from Jim Jarmusch, an interview with Pictures At A Revolution author Mark Harris, as well as material about the film’s stark midcentury architecture.
The Grapes Of Death 4K
Available April 21, 2026
A director whose hardcore work was woven into the heart of his career, prolific French filmmaker Jean Rollin made dreamy and erotic films that rarely strayed far from his more explicit impulses. His gory zombie film The Grapes Of Death (Les Raisins De La Mort), with a new restoration by Powerhouse Films, is perhaps his best and most respected mainstream work. Giving Brigitte Lahaie her first “real” acting role and filled with fantastical imagery—locals are being zombified by wine!—the film is a perfect starting point for those interested in Rollin’s oeuvre. And Powerhouse is rolling out the red carpet, providing a new audio commentary, a new making-of documentary, new subtitles, an 80-page booklet, and plenty of other older extras.
Innerspace 4K
Available April 28, 2026
A classic of get-small cinema, Joe Dante’s Innerspace is quintessentially ’80s (Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan?) and a pop cultural touchstone whenever one needs to reference getting shrunk down and injected into someone else. Why not see it in the best possible way? Arrow’s got a new Dante-approved 4K and, befitting a physical release with the full participation of the filmmaker, it’s getting the deluxe treatment. That means the disc is full of new goodies: a pair of audio commentaries, a new hour-long making-of documentary, multiple behind-the-scenes featurettes, and a big ol’ booklet featuring half a dozen critics on the movie.
The Novice
Available April 28, 2026
A newer release than the others on this list, The Novice is a killer debut from 2021 that slipped under the radar for most moviegoers. Lauren Hadaway and her star Isabelle Fuhrman (the orphan from Orphan) team up for a full-throttle look at toxic overachievement in the world of collegiate rowing—something transferable to school sports in general, where it’s all a money-making machine, burning through kids like coal. With jittery style and a brutally committed central performance, The Novice is physical filmmaking that edges into body horror, all wrapped up in a relatable anxiety nightmare.