This Week in Blu-ray / DVD Releases: Gone Girl, Wetlands, Boardwalk Empire

By John Law

January 12th 2015, 11:30pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This week: Reunited with Gone Girl, the icky charm of Wetlands, and saying goodbye to Boardwalk Empire.

► No movie is a sure thing, but pairing David Fincher with GONE GIRL was pretty close to a lock. Everything about Gillian Flynn’s addictive thriller was perfectly suited for Fincher’s style, and it paid off with the biggest hit of a near impeccable career. His casting is once again spot-on. After all those doubts, Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike are superb in this twisted mystery of a love story. Pike, especially, offers one of the most fascinating characters of the year, and despite the movie’s B movie spirit, she should be in the thick of the Oscar race. At once Fincher’s most pulpy and lightweight flick, and maybe his most audience-pleasing. But audience pleasing Fincher is still first rate.

► Remember the Worst Toilet in Scotland scene from ‘Trainspotting?’ Imagine an entire movie of that and you’ve got the gonzo German gross-out flick WETLANDS. Carla Juri plays a hygiene-challenged teen who gets off on vegetable dildos, filthy commodes, and leaving her ‘pussy mucous’ in public places. All to cope with her parents’ divorce. After she gives herself an anal fissure while trimming her butt hairs, she starts an unlikely relationship with the male nurse treating her. That’s right, after you’re done wretching this becomes a romantic comedy. Word of advice: Skip the pizza while watching this.

► The fifth and final season of BOARDWALK EMPIRE deftly jumped forward and backward, showing how the young Nucky Thompson lost his way to crime and then, how his Atlantic City empire finally comes to a painful end in the ‘30s. The overriding theme is that old sins will always resurface, and brutal as it was to see these great characters meet their fate, it’s really the only way a story about killers and bootleggers could end. Stephen Graham is especially great as an out of control Al Capone, and Steve Buscemi saves his best work of the series for last as Nucky, denied the fate his real-life counterpart received. Just eight episodes, but this is a blueprint on how to do a final season right.

► Things have been spotty for Liam Neeson since ‘Taken,’ but A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES is one of the bright spots. Based on a 1992 book by Lawrence Block (Harrison Ford was once attached to star), Neeson stars as a former alcoholic cop moonlighting as an unlicensed private eye. When he’s asked by a heroin dealer (‘Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens) to find the men who killed his wife, he discovers they aren’t just kidnappers.

► Still the most underrated comedy on TV, EPISODES hits its stride in Season 3. With his dismal sitcom sinking in the ratings, Matt LeBlanc – playing himself as a likeable douche – desperately tries to get written out of the show when a better offer comes along. Meanwhile, Carol (a brilliantly funny Kathleen Rose Perkins) meets her deranged new boss, and showrunners Sean and Bev (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) decide three years of L.A. is enough and plot their return home to London. Everything about this season felt like the final one, but it returned on Showtime over the weekend.

► Jason Reitman’s relative hot streak hit a wall with the much-loathed MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN, based on Chad Kultgen’s 2011 book. Uncomfortable tales of woe among teens and their miserable parents, touching upon suicide, slut shaming and AshleyMadison.com. Ensemble cast includes Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Rosemarie DeWitt and Emma Thompson. Didn’t even reach $2 million at the box office.

► Not to be confused with ‘Annabelle’ (on blu-ray next week), the spook flick JESSABELLE has Sarah Snook as a woman recovering from an accident at her childhood home. After she finds a video of her deceased mother reading tarot cards to a little girl, who she assumes is herself, the usual ghostly clichés and jump scares begin. On a $1 million budget this thing made $23 million – and that’s why they’ll keep coming.

► Friends of Jimi Hendrix were quick to dismiss John Ridley’s JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE as hogwash, especially scenes depicting the peace-spouting guitarist violently beating girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell). Henrix’s estate also refused music rights, at which point you have to wonder why they bothered making it. Story focuses on Hendrix (played by Outkast’s Andre Benjamin) in London during 1966 and 1967 and takes us to Monterey, but without the music you’re getting a fuzzy picture at best on his genius.

Also out this week: