Criterion has released a two-disc 4K UHD version of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein along with a standard 2-disc standard Blu-ray version of the 2025 theatrical release streamed last year on Netflix.

Netflix rarely allows home video releases of films on their streaming platform but sometimes they are contractually bound to do so thanks to the arm-twisting of high-powered producers and directors in order to get first dibs on their films.

Frankenstein was nominated for 9 Oscars including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay (del Toro from Mary Shelley’s oft-filmed novel) and Supporting Actor for Jacob Elordi’s soulful portrayal of the monster. It was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Sound, Score, Production Design, Costume Design and Makeup and Hairstyling, winning for the last three.

Elordi who won the Critics Choice award for his performance and Stellan Skarsgard who won the Golden Globe for Sentimental Value, another recent Criterion release, were at one point considered the front-runners for the Oscar in their category, but the award went to Sean Penn, who had won several critics awards for One Battle After Another in one of the year’s tightest races.

Although Elordi gave the film’s standout performance, there was also high praise for Oscar Isaac’s Dr. Frankenstein and Mia Goth in a dual role as both Frankenstein and the monster’s brides. Also memorable in other roles were Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance, and Lars Mikkelson.

While the film may not be as powerful as James Whale’s 1931 version of Frankenstein and its 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, it is arguably the best of many big and small screen interpretations since.

Another recent release of a Netflix streamer is Kismet’s release of Jacques Audiard’s 2024 film, Emilia Pérez on Blu-ray.

The film is a musical drama about a Mexican drug cartel headed by a trans woman played by real-life Spanish trans actress Karla Sofia Gascón.

Emilia Pérez was nominated for 13 Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actress (Gascón), Supporting Actress (Zoe Zaldaña), Adapted Screenplay (co-written by Audiard) and International Feature. It was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound, Score, Song (“El Mal”), Song (“Mi Camino”) and Makeup and Hairstyling. It won two for Zaldaña’s performance and the song, “El Mal”.

The Academy received backlash for the film’s 13 Oscar nominations, due to the controversial portrayal of Mexican culture, grammatical errors with the spoken Spanish by French director Audiard, the use of artificial intelligence to enhance Gascón’s singing voice, and what many considered an offensive representation of trans people in the film.

Shortly after the Oscar nominations were announced, Gascón came under scrutiny over a series of resurfaced racist and xenophobic posts toward several minorities she made on Twitter between 2016 and 2024.

Gascón, an early front-runner for Best Actress was now considered the least likely nominee to win over Mikey Madison in Anora, Demi Moore in The Substance, Cynthia Erivo in Wicked and surprise nominee, second generation Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here. Madison won.

Most of Warner Archive’s October Blu-ray releases have now been released after production delays.

The best of the Warner Archive batch is Richard Brooks’ 1955 film, Blackboard Jungle, the first of the films about schoolteachers in difficult circumstances against a school full of delinquents. It was also the first film to feature rock “n” roll starting with Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” played over the opening credits.

Glenn Ford had one of this best roles as the idealistic English teacher with Sidney Poitier as the most redeemable of his students the standout in a supporting cast that also included Anne Francis as Ford’s wife, Louis Calhern as a know-it-all older teacher, Margaret Hayes as a flirtatious teacher who survives an attempted rape, and Richard Kiley as a sensitive math teacher whose beloved record collection is destroyed by the punks headed by Vic Morrow.

Compton Bennett’s 1949 film of That Forsyte Woman from the first book of John Galsworthy’s The Forstyte Saga is an interesting take on the rigidity of Victorian age upper-class society. Greer Garson has the title role as the wife of one of the Forsyte cousins (Errol Flynn), pursued by another one (Walter Pidgeon) and an architect (Robert Young) fiancé of Pidgeon’s daughter (Janet Leigh). Pidgeon was originally cast as Garson’s cold husband and Flynn as his morally loose cousin, but they switched roles as both wanted to play against type.

Jack Conway’s 1947 film, The Hucksters is an often-hilarious spoof of the advertising business with Clark Gable in his first post-World War II hit as an ad executive opposite Deborah Kerr as a war widow with two small children in her first Hollywood film. The Supporting cast is led by Sydney Greenstreet as an uncouth multi-millionaire, Adolphe Menjou as Gable’s boss and Ava Gadner as a rising singing star.

Conway’s 1941 film, Love Crazy is a zany comedy in which William Powell plays a husband trying to win back Myrna Loy after she sues him for divorce by pretending to be crazy. The film has site gags galore included Powell being trapped in an elevator with neighbor Gail Patrick and later in drag impersonating a fictional sister to fool his perusers. Jack Carson as a bodybuilder and Florence Bates as Loy’s mother co-star.

William Dieterle’s Jewel Robbery is the first of three 1932 films that made Kay Francis a major box-office star, one of two in which she starred opposite William Powell.

In this one, she’s a jewel thief like Powell who try to outsmart one another. The plot is like the one she played later that year in Ernst Lubitsch’s better known Trouble in Paradise opposite Herbert Marshall. For my money, while both films have their moments, neither is as good as Tay Garnett’s One Way Passage released at the end of the year in which both she and Powell play characters doomed to die within the year.

Happy Viewing