Period Piece movies available on 4K Blu-ray, ranked by transfer quality.
dir. Penny Marshall
S-Tier Sony 4K. Strong extras package with audio commentary, deleted scenes, and TV series episodes.
Sony Pictures · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Miloš Forman
S-Tier Warner Bros. 4K with a perfect 5.0 specs score. The 4K restoration played theatrically before the disc release. Both the theatrical and director's cut are included. The production design finally gets the resolution it needed.
Warner Bros. · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. David O. Russell
S-Tier Sony 4K. David O. Russell's 70s-set crime film. The period costumes and hair gain detail in 4K.
dir. Damien Chazelle
S-Tier Paramount 4K. Shot on 35mm, native 4K with Dolby Vision on a BD-100 disc. Divisive film that plays better on a second watch when you know what you're getting into.
Paramount Pictures · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Stanley Kubrick
S-Tier Criterion 4K. Kubrick's three-hour period piece. The inside cover art is great. The candlelit scenes are a real test for any display and the HDR handles them well.
Criterion Collection · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Kevin Costner
S-Tier Warner Bros. 4K. Costner's self-financed three-hour western saga. Most people are holding off on chapter one and waiting for the complete set whenever the rest of the saga actually materializes.
dir. Greta Gerwig
S-Tier Sony 4K. Gerwig's Little Women, and it's only available inside the Columbia Classics Vol. 5 box set. People spent years asking for this on 4K and then got frustrated when Sony buried it in a collection instead of giving it a standalone release. Sellers have been splitting the set and selling individual discs, which tells you how much demand there is for this as a standalone.
dir. Carol Reed
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a classic tale of an orphan who runs away from the workhouse and joins up with a group of boys headed by the Artful Dodger and trained to be pickpockets by master thief Fagin.
dir. Steven Spielberg
The black and white photography in 4K is consistently cited as reference quality for the format. The 30th Anniversary steelbook is the current edition most people are buying. Paramount's 4K handling of their prestige catalog has been strong, and this is one of the best examples. Not a film anyone watches casually, but the one everyone owns.
Universal Pictures · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Ang Lee
Sony's S-Tier 4K of Ang Lee's Jane Austen adaptation. Extremely thin collector discussion. The kind of disc that exists quietly in collections without generating threads.
Sony Pictures
dir. David Lynch
StudioCanal S-Tier 4K. The Lynch/Hopkins black-and-white body horror character study got the StudioCanal restoration treatment, and it's one of the few Lynch films not on Criterion in 4K. Black-and-white grain structure is the main draw.
StudioCanal · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Robert Eggers
Arrow Video S-Tier 4K, paired with A24's own release. Eggers' black-and-white seafaring nightmare has grain structure, high-contrast lighting, and tight Academy framing that all benefit from the higher bitrate.
Arrow Video · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Jane Campion
Sold out during the Criterion 24-hour flash sale in March 2026. Jane Campion's Palme d'Or winner on Criterion 4K.
Carlotta Films · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Jacques Audiard
Oregon, 1851. Hermann Kermit Warm, a chemist and aspiring gold prospector, keeps a profitable secret that the Commodore wants to know, so he sends the Sisters brothers, two notorious assassins, to capture him on his way to California.
dir. Akira Kurosawa
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
BFI · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Fred Zinnemann
A-Tier Sony 4K. Part of the Columbia Classics Collection Volume 5, which frustrated collectors who wanted a standalone release. Buried alongside On the Waterfront, Tootsie, The Age of Innocence, and Little Women. The box set bundling means paying for films you might already own to get the ones you don't.
dir. Paul Verhoeven
A-Tier Capelight Pictures 4K. Verhoeven's nun film. Capelight has the German 4K release, and Zavvi stocked it for Canadian buyers.
Capelight Pictures
dir. Mel Gibson
Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.
Sony A-Tier 4K. Ang Lee's wuxia film. The steelbook has been as low as $15 USD on Amazon with a coupon, which is steal pricing for a film this visually rich. Some collectors held off based on mixed forum opinions but found the transfer better than expected once they actually watched it. Pairs well with Hero and House of Flying Daggers if you're building a wuxia shelf.
dir. Peter Weir
A-Tier Disney 4K. This was THE most-requested 4K in the collector community, and the announcement generated massive excitement. The cannons on the DVD had legendary bass that the Blu-ray neutered with a 25Hz filter, so the 4K audio is being closely watched. Disney left out the 70-minute making-of documentary from the DVD, which frustrated people who wanted a definitive release.
Walt Disney Studios · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Martin Scorsese
In 19th century New York high society, a young lawyer falls in love with a woman separated from her husband, while he is engaged to the woman's cousin.
dir. Roland Emmerich
Pre-order on Please Rewind. One comment noted it'll likely hit Target's B2G1 deal starting this week, which would put it around $26.66 USD if timed right.
Sony Pictures · Steelbook
dir. Christopher Nolan
A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
dir. Cecil B. DeMille
Still coming up in Easter and Passover context. Someone rewatched it ahead of their Ben-Hur collector's edition arriving and the comments went to Spartacus comparisons. The 4K is A-Tier.
dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood
The story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen, and General Nanisca as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life.
dir. Jacques Becker
At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.
First physical release after nearly three years of waiting. Criterion disc. Early rewatchers are calling it one of the best films of the decade, and the consensus is that it rewards a second and third viewing far more than the theatrical experience.
dir. John Sturges
C-Tier Kino Lorber 4K. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas at the O.K. Corral.
Kino Lorber
dir. Sean Durkin
The true story of the inseparable Von Erich brothers, who made history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s. Through tragedy and triumph, under the shadow of their domineering father and coach, the brothers seek larger-than-life immortality on the biggest stage in sports.
Leonine · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. George Lucas
D-Tier Universal 4K. George Lucas re-colored the film for the special edition and the 4K carries that same color timing over. People noticed immediately and there was a wave of returns. The resolution bump is there if you can live with the color changes.
Universal Pictures · Blu-ray
dir. Satoshi Kon
D-Tier Anime Limited. Satoshi Kon's animated love letter to Japanese cinema. No 4K version exists yet, though Shout Factory's Blu-ray release was welcomed after it was the last Kon film without a proper home video edition. People are hoping for a 4K with HDR and asking about a Paranoia Agent restoration.
Anime Limited
dir. Oleg Ryaskov
The plot is based on the adventures of secret agents, members of an expedition sent by Peter the Great to the Madagascar pirates in order to attract them to his side.
dir. Jennifer Kent
In 1825, Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
