I have been a big fan of David Fincher’s films in the past. I thought Se7en, Zodiac and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo were among the best films of their respective years while The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button were the very best of theirs. I just don’t get the acclaim for Fincher’s latest, the international hit, Gone Girl which has been newly released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It’s not just the film has plot holes you can drive a truck through, but that none of it makes any sense. What is most difficult to understand is the acclaim for Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her best-selling novel. If this were written by a man, feminists would be screaming bloody murder. With the sole exception of Carrie Coon as Ben Affleck’s selfless twin sister, all the women are either nasty or stupid or both.

Rosamund Pike has been outstanding in such films as Pride & Prejudice, An Education, Made in Dagenham and Barney’s Vision so it’s nice to see her getting expanded career recognition. I just wish it were for something worthy of her talent.

Liam Neeson has been criticized for years for making one potboiler after another. His films are often coyly referred to as paycheck films, so it’s nice to see him in something worthy of his talents again.

Neeson plays a retired cop working as a private detective in Scott Frank’s A Walk Among the Tombstones. Hired by Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) to find whoever killed and chopped up his wife, Neeson discovers a second victim and a potential third in this edge-of-your-seat thriller from the writer of Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report and the writer/director of The Lookout. The film is very much in the same class as those films.

A Walk Among the Tombstones is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Ira Sachs’ Love Is Strange plays like an updated version of Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow.

In the 1937 classic, elderly couple Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore must split up and live separately with one of their middle-aged children after their home is foreclosed upon. In Sach’s film, retired artist John Lithgow and Catholic high school music teacher Alfred Molina decide to marry after 39 years together. When the Archdiocese finds out, Molina is fired and the couple is forced to sell their condo and seek an affordable apartment. Each must temporarily live with family members. Marisa Tomei as Lithgow’s niece by marriage is a substitute for Fay Bainter as Bondi and Moore’s daughter-in-law. Welcoming at first, she soon cracks under the strain of constantly having Lithgow under foot.

Lithgow and Molina are excellent as are Tomei and Charlie Tahan as Tomei’s teenage son. The film suffers from an abrupt ending but is otherwise a richly rewarding character portrait that pays just tribute to McCarey’s film.

Love Is Strange is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Tyrone Power returned from World War II to star as the World War I veteran seeking spiritual enlightenment in one of his best remembered roles in Edmund Goulding’s film of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. The film earned four Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Art Direction, Supporting Actor (Clifton Webb) and Supporting Actress (Anne Baxter). Gene Tierney co-starred.

Fox’s upgraded Blu-ray release is one of their best.

Quick, what film starred Barbra Streisand’s once and future husbands, along with a now convicted felon and a star of TV’s Law and Order? That would be Peter Hyams’ 1978 thriller Capricorn One newly upgraded to Blu-ray by Shout Factory.

James Brolin, O.J. Simpson and Sam Waterston are three astronauts forced to fake a Mars landing by nefarious space program officials led by Hal Holbrook. Elliott Gould is the intrepid reporter who uncovers the scheme as the astronauts realize they are going to be killed in order to be kept quiet. Brenda Vaccaro has the principal female role as Brolin’s wife.

Shout Factory has also released an excellent Blu-ray upgrade of Werner Herzog’s 1982 classic Fitzcaraldo.

The epic film is based on the true story of a visionary eccentric who built an opera house in a small town in Peru in order to bring together Enrico Caruso and Sarah Bernhardt. This remarkable film about achieving the impossible actually did just that in order to be made. Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale star in Herzog’s masterpiece.

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray upgrade of John Schlesinger’s 1985 film, The Falcon and the Snowman. This is an underrated gem about the real life former altar boys who become Soviet spies in 1970’s Southern California.

The film combines the talents of two former Oscar winners, director Schlesinger ( Midnight Cowboy) and star Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People), and two future Oscar winners, writer Steven Zallian (Schindler’s List), and co-star Sean Penn (Mystic River, Milk), all working at the top of their game. Poirot’s David Suchet is also memorable as the Soviet agent controlling Hutton and Penn.

Miramax has finally given a long overdue Blu-ray upgrade to Jim Sheridan’s 1989 film My Left Foot which won well-deserved Oscars for Daniel Day-Lewis as Irish poet Christy Brown, afflicted since birth with cerebral palsy and Benda Fricker as his long-suffering mother. Needless to say, the film has never looked better.

This week’s new releases include The Boxtrolls and The Drop.