This Criterion Collection 4K just proved something vital about streaming to me

If my 2026 tech experience has been defined by one thing more than any other, it's been 4K Blu-rays. I've gone from not quite a sceptic to a full-blown convert, and I really shouldn't be surprised that I'm having such a good time with a Panasonic DP-UB820 ultraHD player and a succession of high quality discs.

While I've broadly found that you have to turn to the most modern releases to get the full fury of a 5.1 sound system firing on all cylinders (I'm thinking of both Dune films, for instance), one of the real delights I've been discovering is the way you can engage with and consider older films more directly when you watch them in higher quality.

There's basically no team on the planet doing this quite like The Criterion Collection, and checking in on its latest releases is always a pleasure now that it's embraced 4K and is producing 4K discs each and every month. The latest I've got my hands on is a film I'd not heard of before – Tsui Hark's The Blade, a mid-90s wuxia action film that completely upends its genre conventions and is shot like a cinéma-vérité movie.

It's an absolutely mad film, full of editing that'll have you gasping not just with adulation but also sometimes bafflement, and completely disregards what you might know from the biggest wuxia films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That makes it riotous to watch, with its focus on filming huge fights like a real-world documentarian would.

With a lossless mono-channel sound signature that's been restored, this isn't a disc to test your sound system particularly, which is a good reminder of the fact that not every film makes sense for a high-end Atmos mix. This is a perfect Criterion disc to remind you just what's so enjoyable about physical releases, though.

These discs always come with a lovely insert and an essay to read, some of which will help explain the film's themes, and others of which will be more thoughtful and personal to the author. These are brilliant, but what are really invaluable are the extras included on the non-4K disc.

In The Blade's case, the first thing to watch is actually now on YouTube, too – although it contains major spoilers if you've never seen the film. It's a fabulous breakdown of what makes the movie noteworthy, made in collaboration with a YouTube channel called Every Frame a Painting that I've followed for a decade at this point. It's a gorgeous way to explore what you just watched.

THE BLADE (1995): The Edges of Wuxia | Criterion x Every Frame a Painting - YouTube

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Next, I segued to the included documentary Action et vérité, which featured the director himself alongside a starring actor and the film's screenwriter, all talking about the extreme challenges faced by the production, and some genuinely amazing choices made during the process.

All of this left me understanding vastly more about the film than I would have with basically any disc-only release, let alone if I'd just streamed it wherever I could get it without finding out anything more. It's an experience I've enjoyed a bunch, recently – I bought Criterion's restoration of After Hours last week and had the exact same feeling about the way its extra features expanded my understanding.

There's no doubt that the price of both a 4K player like the UB820 and the discs themselves makes this a luxury, and I won't dance around that. If you have the capacity and budget, though, I think every time I watch a disc with decent extra features, it takes me further away from wanting to stream anything again.

I still will, of course, because there's no way around it, but The Blade is a perfect reminder of why physical media remains king if you can afford it.