In a year when most new films have proven to be disappointing if not an outright insult to the intelligence, it’s nice to discover a moving, wholly satisfying science fiction disaster film from an unexpected source.

The 1968 classic Planet of the Apes spawned four sequels and a dreadful 2001 remake. Ten years later relatively unknown director Rupert Wyatt has given us Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is not only one of the year’s best genre films, but one of the year’s best films overall, a prequel to the original which takes place in the present day.

James Franco is a research scientist who develops a drug meant to cure Alzheimer’s. Tested on laboratory chimps in San Francisco, an increase in dosage hurries the experiment along, but results in disaster when an overly aggressive chimp runs amok. The powers that be order an end to the experiment and the destruction of all the chimps in Franco’s lab. It’s only after they are all euthanized that he discovers the main test chimp had a baby she was protecting which caused her to go crazy in the first place. He sneaks the baby chimp out of the lab and raises him in the home he shares with his father (John Lithgow) in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

As his father’s disease progresses, Franco uses the drug to treat his father, but as the drug wears off and the old man causes damage to the neighbor’s car the neighbor beats the old man causing the growing ape to go after the neighbor and be taken from Franco. The ensuing result forms the bulk of the film.

The motion capture used in the film is simply amazing. Andy Serkis, best known as Lord of the Rings’ Gollum and the title character in the 2005 remake of King Kong has been talked up as a possible Oscar nominee for playing Caesar, the young chimp. The problem is that his image is completely transparent in the film, having been digitally transformed. Nor could his performance be considered a voice-over as he only speaks three words at the end of the film, so I doubt the Academy will break tradition and nominate his performance. The campaign, however, could work to get Academy members who wouldn’t otherwise watch the film, to take a gander. They won’t be disappointed.

Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes and several documentaries including one on The Genius of Andy Serkis.

Just in time for Christmas, Warner Bros. has given us a beautifully restored version of Meet Me in St. Louis, while in what one can only assume is a confusion over which holiday we’re celebrating, Fox has given us the rousing 4th of July salute, Stars and Stripes Forever. Neither film has ever looked as good on home video.

While the picture and sound have been greatly improved for the Blu-ray release of Vincente Minnelli’s 1944 classic, Meet Me in St. Louis, most of the extras, including Liza Minnelli’s introduction and the film’s commentary, have been imported from the 2004 standard DVD release. The one new extra is a truly dreadful 1966 pilot for a planned series based on the original characters with Shelley Fabares and Celeste Holm that thankfully never aired. Why they included that instead of the sublime 1959 TV remake with Jane Powell, Jeanne Crain, Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Tab Hunter and Ed Wynn, I don’t know.

The film, which plays out in four acts over four seasons, begins on a sweltering summer day as most of the cast is introduced singing the title tune. The family is comprised of Judy Garland, Lucille Bremer, Joan Carroll and Margaret O’Brien as the Smith sisters, Henry Daniels, Jr. as their brother, Mary Astor and Leon Ames as their parents and Harry Davenport as their grandfather, with Marjorie Main as the maid who completes their middleclass 1903 household. Tom Drake is the boy next door.

Romance, comedy and music abound in equal amounts with Garland and O’Brien the standouts. Garland, who fell in love with and married her director, Minnelli, upon completion of the film is framed in a manner she never was before and seldom was afterward. Aside from The Wizard of Oz and A Star Is Born, it’s her finest couple of hours on film. O’Brien is even better, stealing every scene she’s in, including the climactic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” providing her trademark sobs and tears while Garland sings her heart out.

The great John Philip Sousa apparently led such a dull life that aStars and Stripes Forever, the biographical film about him, has to have two fictional characters, played by Robert Wagner and Debra Paget to liven it up. A subdued Clifton Webb is properly stately as the dignified Sousa and Ruth Hussey is effectively supportive as his wife. The music, though, is the thing, and it’s put over with panache.

The Blu-ray edition contains the standard DVD edition as a bonus along with a couple of documentaries on Sousa and the making of the film and a nice souvenir booklet.

The Warner Archive has an ambitious release slate for its last offering of the year, five twofer sets of pre-code comedy gems and five literary adaptations. I’m still making my way through the comedies, of which I’ve only seen two, Loose Ankles and Week-End Marriage both starring Loretta Young, already an accomplished actress at 16 in the former and a lovely screen presence at 19 in the latter. If you only know Loretta as the prim and proper lady she later became, you’re in for a great surprise and a real treat if you sample these titillating early films, which were quite shocking in their day. Dorothy Mackaill, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell are among the stars in the other comedy releases.

The best of the literary adaptations is the 1946 film of A.J. Cronin’s The Green Years.

Combining elements of Cronin’s previously filmed novels, The Citadel and The Keys of the Kingdom, The Green Years, directed by Victor Saville, who produced The Citadel, focuses on both religion and the medical profession.

Dean Stockwell, one of the best child actors ever, plays the orphaned son of Irish father and Scottish mother who comes to live with his mother’s family after the death of both his parents.

Hume Cronin is his miserly grandfather; Selena Royle his self-sacrificing grandmother; Jessica Tandy, his kindly aunt; Norman Lloyd his despicable uncle; Gladys Cooper, Cronin’s mother and Stockwell’s great-mother and best of all, Oscar nominated Charles Coburn, Royle’s father and Stockwell’s great-grandfather. The boy, who is raised Catholic despite his mother’s family’s staunch Protestantism, makes himself sick studying to become a doctor as nothing comes easily in a Cronin novel or a film made from his works.

The only negative is that the expressive Stockwell grows up to become the dullish Tom Drake. Fortunately in real life Stockwell grew up to become one of the best young actors of his generation and later, one of the best character actors of his day as well.

Adapted from a play rather than a novel, Edward, My Son was co-written by Robert Morley who starred in the hit Broadway version opposite Peggy Ashcroft. George Cukor’s 1949 film replaces Morley and Ashcroft with Spencer Tracy and Deborah Kerr. Kerr’s Oscar nominated portrayal of the loving wife turned bitter alcoholic is the best thing about the film that can’t overcome its staginess even to the non-appearance of the title character. Tracy, one of the great actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age was never convincing as a bad guy and his mean jerk of a tycoon here is no exception.

None of the almost two hundred films made from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels have come close to equaling the greatness of his writing. 1949’s The Great Sinner, directed by Robert Siodmak and 1958’s The Brothers Karamazov, directed by Richard Brooks, are but two examples.

The Great Sinner features an all-star cast including Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Ethel Barrymore, Frank Morgan and Agnes Moorehead, all of whom have done better work. Peck is the moralistic writer slowly entrapped by the world of gambling. Gardner is effective as his love interest, and Douglas and Huston do what they can with smallish roles. Barrymore, Morgan and Moorehead have what today would be referred to as cameos.

The Brothers Karamazovgives us another all-star cast headed by Yul Brynner, Maria Schell, Claire Bloom, Richard Basehart, Albert Salmi, William Shatner and Oscar nominated Lee J. Cobb as the family patriarch. Cobb’s over-the-top performance was a bit much, even by the standards of the day. It’s even tougher to watch today.

A real curiosity, Delmer Daves’ 1964 film of Herman Wouk’s Youngblood Hawke stars James Franciscus in a role intended for Warren Beatty. He does what he can in the role of the naïve truck-driver from Kentucky who becomes an overnight New York literary sensation. Susanne Pleshette and Genevieve Page as the women he loves; Lee Bowman as his publisher; Mildred Dunnock as his mother and Mary Astor and John Emery as old-time Broadway performers are among those in his orbit. Page’s femme fatale was well regarded at the time, but it is far from one of the actress’ best performances. This was Bowman and Emery’s last film, and Astor’s next to last.

This week’s new DVD releases include Oscar hopefuls Midnight in Paris; Margin Call and Warrior.