Thomas Hardy’s 1878 novel Far From the Madding Crowd has been filmed at least five times beginning a hundred years ago in in 1915. The best known version until now has been John Schlesinger’s 1967 film starring Julie Christie as the headstrong heiress and Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp as her three suitors, a sturdy sheep farmer, a wealthy landowner and a dashing soldier. Thomas Vinterberg’s superior 2015 version features Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge in those roles.

Mulligan, Schoenaerts, Sheen and Sturridge are not the major stars Christie, Bates, Finch and Stamp were in 1967, but they are better suited to the material than their more famous predecessors. Mulligan and Schoenaerts are Oscar worthy as the independent Victorian woman and the suitor who loved her first and best, while Sheen and Sturridge are almost as good. The film’s screenplay, production design, costume design, cinematography and musical score are also Oscar worthy. Unlike previous versions, this one is highly romantic with a payoff kiss that had audiences in theaters swooning then cheering as they wiped away tears of joy. That Vinterberg should be the one to give this material its most romantic interpretation is surprising considering the director’s previous films, the austere The Celebration and The Hunt.

Far From the Madding Crowd is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Extras include deleted scenes, none of which are fillers and were presumably cut only to fit into the film’s two hour running time.

Russell Crowe makes his feature film directorial debut with The Water Diviner in which he also stars as an Australian widower who travels to Turkey in 1919 to find the bodies of his three sons believed killed at the Battle of Gallipoli four years earlier. Utilizing the intuitive skills he employs to find water, he finds the bones of two of his sons. A Turkish officer who has taken an interest in his plight discovers that his oldest son was not killed at Gallipoli, but taken prisoner after the battle. A subplot involves Crowe’s relationship with the widowed manager of the small hotel at which he is staying in Istanbul and her young son. The climactic rescue of his remaining son from Greek-held territory is fraught with danger, and the son’s revelation of the death of his brothers, though not surprising, is heartbreaking, but there is a well-earned happy ending.

A major hit in Australia, the film was nominated for eight Australian Film Awards and won three for Best Film, Costume Design and Supporting Actor (Yilmaz Erdogan as Crowe’s Turkish friend).

In addition to Crowe and Erdogan, the fine cast includes Olga Kurylenko as the hotel manager, Dylan Georgiades as her son, Jai Courtney as the colonel in charge of finding and burying the Australian dead, and Ryan Corr, James Fraser and Ben O’Toole as Crowe’s sons.

The Water Diviner is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has his best post-gubernatorial role as the father of a young teenage girl suffering from a zombie-like disease in Maggie, title designer Henry Hobson’s first film as director. Classified as a horror film, the horror is kept to a minimum. It centers instead on the poignant last days of the daughter, played by a very appealing Abigail Breslin. Joley Richardson impresses as Schwarzenegger’s second wife and Breslin’s stepmother. And Bryce Romero all but steals the film as Breslin’s friend who is further along in the disease than she is. Douglas M. Griffin and J.D. Evermore are also memorable as the sheriff and his deputy who have the task of euthanizing the victims of the disease when it reaches its cannibalistic state. Their method of choice is a quick rifle shot to the chest.

Maggie is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

If the state of horror movies is alive and well with films like Maggie, Housebound and The Babadook, the state of science fiction ,aside from the brilliant Ex Machina, sadly is not.

Released theatrically as Insurgent, the follow-up film to Divergent is being marketed on Blu-ray and standard DVD under the cumbersome title of The Divergent Series: Insurgent as though home video audiences wouldn’t otherwise be able to tell what the film is about. To be fair, both titles are utilized within the film. Insurgent appears at the beginning of the film and the longer title at the end. I mention this only because it is the most intriguing thing about the film which focuses on lead Shailene Woodley getting into one scrape after another and being rescued by boyfriend Theo James and sometimes duplicitous Miles Teller or confused brother Ansel Elgort. Third-billed Octavia Spencer has little to do as a kindly faction leader while Kate Winslet and Naomi Watts waste their star power on their one-note villains.

Scarlett Johansson starred in two of last year’s science-fiction films, earning awards recognition for both Under the Skin and Lucy. Many found Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin to be one of last year’s best films. I found it ridiculous. I’d rather watch a documentary about Scotland, where the film takes place, than sit through another viewing of outer-space alien in human form Johansson picking up guys, watching them strip and then drowning them.

The actress fares better in Luc Besson’s Lucy in which she plays a woman in danger who ingests a mind-expanding drug that allows her to utilize more of her brain than anyone in the history of the world. She gets to talk a lot more in this one, and it doesn’t hurt that Morgan Freeman is around to lend his magnificent mellifluous voice to the proceedings. It is hogwash, of course, but it goes down easier than Johansson’s other, more acclaimed release of the year.

Under the Skin and Lucy are available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

On the TV front, the stylish Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries: Season 8 has been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Once again we see the folks at Station House 6 solve more grisly murders, some involving famous people passing through Toronto at the turn of the Twentieth Century, some hitting close to home. Remarkably the series remains strong with its original four stars still in place, Yannick Bisson as the titled detective, Thomas Craig as his blustery boss, Helene Joy as the doctor who is now finally his wife, and Jonny Harris as the constable and sometimes writer who wants to be a detective. The spotlight this season is on Harris who has a new love, a young presumed widow with an enterprising son. The season ends on a cliffhanger involving the constable and his would-be ready-made family.

Murdoch Mysteries, Season 8 is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of The French Lieutenant’s Woman and the original 1931 version of The Front Page.