Arguably the third greatest movie of Hollywood’s greatest year behind Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, no one who didn’t get to see Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington shortly after its release in October 1939 has seen the film as it was originally intended. The film was such an enormous success that it was re-printed so many times during its original release and in subsequent re-releases that the negative was damaged long ago. It was damaged so badly that copies of the film that have come down to us through the seven and a half subsequent decades have been made from badly spliced together duplicates which themselves came from poorly made duplicates. Even the heralded 1990 restoration by the Library of Congress failed to correct all the problems.

Sony’s brand new 4K Blu-ray restoration used as much of the original negative as possible supplemented by two nitrate duplicate negatives and Capra’s personal nitrate print which Sony has had for just the last ten years. The result is as brilliant a presentation of the once controversial film.

Denounced by members of the U.S. Senate who expressed shock that there could be graft in their chambers, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley claimed he spoke for the entire body when he declared the film “grotesque as anything I have ever seen. Imagine the Vice President of the United States winking up at a pretty girl in the gallery to encourage a filibuster! It showed the Senate as made up of…crooks, led by crooks, listening to a crook. It was so vicious an idea it was a source of disgust and hilarity to every member of Congress who saw it.” Naturally the public ate it up. Half the membership of the New York Film Critics Circle voted it Best Picture of the Year in their annual awards meeting, but when the other half who voted for Gone With the Wind failed to yield, both sides gave in and gave the award to compromise candidate Wuthering Heights while awarding James Stewart the Best Actor award for his unforgettable portrayal of the honest, if naive, young senator.

The Academy nominated it for 11 Oscars including those for Capra, his film, Stewart and both Claude Rains as “the crook” and Harry Carey as the “winking Vice President”. It won for Best Original Story.

If Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was about idealism in the past, Philip Noyce’s film of Lois Lowry’s The Giver is about idealism in the future.

Lowry’s 1993 novel was the first of a quartet, followed by 2000’s Gathering Blue, 2004’s Messenger, and 2012’s Son. The film’s lackluster reviews and tepid box-office probably preclude any of the sequels from being made, but one never knows.

Despite the reviews, the film is at least as good as the similarly themed, but more successful Divergent and The Hunger Games. Set in a bland future in which generations of people have no knowledge of a past which has been erased except in the mind of a “receiver” of knowledge, the film’s plot has more holes in it than a tub of Swiss cheese but that doesn’t diminish one’s appreciation of the film once you get into it.

Brenton Thwaites, who played Sleeping Beauty’s Prince in Maleficent, is the newly appointed “receiver”. He obtains his new-found knowledge from the wizened sitting “receiver” who becomes “the giver” of knowledge. He’s played by Jeff Bridges in one of his best late career performances. Meryl Streep, in a lackluster performance, is the straight-laced head elder, Better are Alexander Skarsgaard and Katie Holmes as Thwaites’ parents and Odeya Rush and Cameron Monaghan as his childhood friends. Taylor Swift has a cameo as the prior failed “receiver”. Four actors, including a pair of twins, play the baby Thwaites protects at 3, 6 and 12 months.

The Giver is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

A big disappointment for me, Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t so much expand on the lead-in of 2011’s rousing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, as to just maintain the status quo until a better sequel comes along. It certainly doesn’t approach the thrill level of either Rise or the classic 1968 version of the original Planet of the Apes.

The biggest problem with the film is that the lead human characters embodied by Jason Clarke and Keri Russell are dull as dishwater. Gary Oldman is completely wasted in a supporting role as Clarke’s boss. Only Kodi Smit-McPhee who starred in Reeves’ Let Me In struck me as a recognizable human being as Clarke’s son. The best performances were turned in by Andy Serkis and Toby Kebbell as warring apes. In fact, Kebbell is so good that now I actually can’t wait to see him sans makeup as Messala in the planned 2016 remake of Ben-Hur opposite Jack Huston in the title role.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

A nice surprise, Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hundred-Foot Journey is a pleasant comedy-drama about the making of a world-class chef, played by Manish Dayal who gets third billing behind the better known Helen Mirren and Om Puri. The film’s marketing focused heavily on the antagonism between Mirren and Puri which informs the film’s first half, but the real treat is in the second half as the two become friends and work to promote Dayal. Charlotte Le Bon co-stars as aspiring French chef. If you can’t figure out how this one ends, you haven’t seen enough movies.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Coinciding with the Christmas Day release of the big screen version of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Image has released a Blu-ray upgrade of the original 1987 Broadway musical taken from a 1991 PBS broadcast. It’s certainly a step up from the washed out DVD version that has been circulating for years.

Bernadette Peters heads the cast as The Witch with Joanna Gleason as The Baker’s Wife, Chip Zien as The Baker, Robert Westenberg as both Cinderella’s Prince and The Wolf, Kim Crosby as Cinderella, and Ben Wright as Jack (in the Beanstalk). The best known songs from the score are “No One Is Alone” and “Children Will Listen”.

Into the Woods is also available in an upgraded standard DVD version.

This week’s new releases include Guardians of the Galaxy and Calvary.