The Criterion Collection In February Wants A ‘House Party’

It will be 2026 before you know and The Criterion Collection UK know that too. The past few months they have been a few steps ahead and in February they want a ‘house party’!

February 2026 will kick-off with the dazzlingly imaginative teen comedy from writer-director Reginald Hudlin, House Party. Coming to  4K Ultra HD on 2nd February,  the film sees hip-hop duo Kid ’n Play bring their star power to the big screen, as aspiring MCs preparing for the party of the year.

Also on 2nd February will be Héctor Babenco‘s Kiss Of The Spiderwoman also arriving on 4K Ultra HD. This features indelible performances from Raul Julia and an Academy Award–winning William Hurt.  The film is a work of radical compassion that boldly expands notions of love, gender, and revolution.

Next up on On 9th February, is Jonathan Glazer’s second feature Birth comes to 4K Ultra HD for the first time.  Starring Nicole Kidman, the film is a haunting cinematic enigma that explores the mysteries of the heart.

Finally, on 16th February, Mike Leigh‘s is Life Is Sweet, arriving on Blu-ray.  Melancholy and funny by turns, this invigorating film was Leigh’s first international sensation.

HOUSE PARTY– Out on 2nd February 4K Digital Restoration

In this dazzlingly imaginative teen comedy, the breakthrough feature debut by writer-director Reginald Hudlin, hip-hop duo Kid ’n Play bring their star power to the big screen as aspiring MCs preparing for the party of the year. When Kid’s father (Robin Harris) forbids him from attending Play’s party, Kid sneaks out anyway, kicking off a wild night full of dance-offs and rap battles, run-ins with bullies and cops, and a bit of romance. With an ensemble cast that also includes Tisha Campbell, AJ Johnson, Martin Lawrence, Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, and members of the music group Full Force, plus a hit soundtrack, House Party is a beloved, feel-good snapshot of early-1990s hip-hop culture that brought Black teenage experience to the mainstream, and that shines bright to this day.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY™ SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
-New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Peter Deming and approved by writer-director Reginald Hudlin, with 4.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
-New audio commentary featuring Hudlin
-New conversation featuring Hudlin, producer Warrington Hudlin, and film scholar Racquel Gates
-New cast reunion featuring actors B-Fine, Bowlegged Lou, and the Legend Paul Anthony of Full Force; Tisha Campbell; AJ Johnson; Christopher “Play” Martin; Daryl “Chill” Mitchell; and Christopher “Kid” Reid
–House Party (1983), the student short by Reginald Hudlin on which his feature is based
-Trailer
-English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by author Michael Harriot

Buy on 4K UHD: AMAZON, HMV, ZAVVI andRAREWAVES

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN – Out on 2nd February New 4K Digital Restoration

Featuring indelible performances from Raul Julia and an Academy Award–winning William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman is a work of radical compassion that boldly expands notions of love, gender, and revolution. In the film—directed by Héctor Babenco following his international breakthrough with Pixote, and adapted from the novel by the iconoclastic writer Manuel Puig—Julia and Hurt play Valentin and Molina, a militant leftist activist and a queer, cinema-obsessed window dresser, imprisoned together under a repressive military dictatorship. The two gradually forge a bond that transforms the way they both understand politics, sexuality, and masculinity. Blending raw realism with Molina’s imaginative escapes into sumptuous movie fantasy, this searing human drama offers a powerful vision of personal liberation embedded within broader political struggle.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
-New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
-Alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack
-One 4K UHD disc of the film presented Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
-Interview with Suzanne Jill Levine, biographer of Kiss of the Spider Woman author Manuel Puig, about the adaptation
–Tangled Web: Making “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (2008), a feature-length documentary
-Short program on Puig
-Trailer
-English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by critic B. Ruby Rich
New cover by Greg Ruth

Buy on 4K UHD:  AMAZON, HMV, ZAVVI and RAREWAVES

BIRTH – Out on 9th February New 4K Digital Restoration

Jonathan Glazer’s second feature is a haunting cinematic enigma that explores the mysteries of the heart. Nicole Kidman delivers a masterfully multilayered performance as Anna, a widow still mourning the death of her husband a decade earlier when she meets Sean (Cameron Bright), a ten-year-old boy who claims to be his reincarnation—leading her into a wrenching confrontation with her own unresolved grief and desires. Featuring painterly cinematography by Harris Savides and a hypnotic orchestral score by Alexandre Desplat, Birth plays its outré premise with unflinching sincerity, yielding a profound emotional reverie on the possibilities of love beyond the physical realm.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY™ SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
-New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Jonathan Glazer, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
-One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
-Interview from 2004 with Glazer and actor Nicole Kidman on Charlie Rose
-New documentary on the making of the film featuring behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Glazer, producers, and members of the cast
-New program on the film’s cinematography featuring interviews with camera operator Craig Haagensen and first assistant cameraman Eric Swanek
-Trailer
-English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by author Olivia Laing
New cover by Neil Kellerhouse

Buy on 4K UHD:   AMAZON, HMV, ZAVVI and RAREWAVES

LIFE IS SWEET– Out on 16th February Restored 2K Digital Film Transfer

This invigorating film from Mike Leigh was his first international sensation. Melancholy and funny by turns, it is an intimate portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London—an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a troubled, ill-tempered layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extraordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams—such as the father’s desire to open a food truck—carry enormous weight.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
-New, restored 2K digital film transfer, supervised by director of photography Dick Pope, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
-New audio commentary featuring director Mike Leigh
-Audio recording of a 1991 interview with Leigh at the National Film Theatre in London
-Five short films written and directed by Leigh for the proposed television series Five-Minute Films, with a new audio introduction by Leigh
-English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: A new essay by critic David Sterritt
New cover by Eric Skillman

Buy on Blu-ray: AMAZON, HMV, ZAVVI and RAREWAVES