So if you're one of nine superpowered aliens from a destroyed world hiding out on Earth when the creatures that wiped out your kind are in hot pursuit, what do you do? If you're John Smith in this film, you stop to develop a roll of film with your Earthling girlfriend. You really can't make this stuff up.

John Smith is played by the up-and-coming hunk Alex Pettyfer (BEASTLY). He is an alien hiding out on Earth with his guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant, TV's JUSTIFIED), who poses as his father. The evil Mogadorians are hunting the nine superpowered aliens in numerical order. The numbering system is never explained. Number 3 has just been killed and John is Number 4.

This is one first rate Blu-ray. The MPEG-4 AVC 1080p picture captures Tony Scott's unique visual style wonderfully. The deeply saturated colors just pop. The red of the runaway train. The blue of the "good" locomotive. The yellow of Will's jacket. The inky blacks that dominated the highly contrasted image. Details are rich in closeups where pores stand out to wide shots where the fall foliage is defined even when the camera is racing by. Grain levels are not consistent, but I chalked that up to the varying cameras used. To find anything like aliasing or shaky edge definition, one has to be looking for it.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is one to show off the sound system with. The LFE track shakes the floor, literally, as the trains roar by. The directionality is perfect as trains, helicopters and trucks race across the entire entire soundscape. In the midst of the chaos, the dialogue is always crisp. There is a reason this film was nominated for an Oscar for Sound Editing.

The best compliment I can pay Tony Scott's film is that it's SPEED on a train. Once the runaway train starts rolling the suspense just keeps climbing to the very end. This is one of Scott's best films for its craftsmanship alone.

Trainer conductor Dewey (Ethan Suplee, MALLRATS) leaves his train thinking the breaks are on, but he was wrong. His expression as the train starts down the track without him tells it all. The nearly half mile long train is in full throttle racing away at over 70 miles per hour headed toward heavily populated areas. Its cargo is highly toxic.

We are told right from the start that this is inspired by a true story. But we quickly discover that it's not inspired by true characters. It's not surprising that a survival film like this would be populated with stock characters, but there is nothing surprising about anything that happens with them. The filmmakers wanted to make an underwater cave story and that is the only part he gets right.

Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh, MOULIN ROGUE!) is the best cave explorer in the world. He's a cold, no-nonsense taskmaster. His son Josh (Rhys Wakefield, TV's HOME AND AWAY) hates him for it and slacks off on his responsibilities at the latest expedition into a massive cave system that stretches miles into the Earth. The billionaire funder/adventurer Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd, FANTASTIC FOUR) arrives to check out the latest discoveries. He has brought his new girlfriend Victoria (Alice Parkinson, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE), who he met on a climb of Everest. While down in the cave, a freak storm hits and quickly begins to flood the caverns. The crew must follow the water down and hopefully discover its exit to the sea in order to survive.

One of the reasons why recent superhero flicks have succeeded where BATMAN & ROBIN failed is because they played the material straight and avoided too many post-modern flashes. Now we get a new superhero adaptation that attempts to find the balance between post-modern and a straight superhero story. Diehard Green Hornet purists might find the film too juvenile, but the character seems the right one for this kind of treatment.

Britt Reid (Seth Rogen, FUNNY PEOPLE) is a party boy, living off the millions of his father James (Tom Wilkinson, MICHAEL CLAYTON), the owner and editor-in-chief of The Daily Sentinel. Their relationship isn't warm; James has always been very hard on his son. But when James suddenly dies, Britt inherits the paper. He meets his father's mechanic Kato (Jay Chou, CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER), a brilliant inventor and martial arts master. He agrees with Britt that his father was a jerk, so they go out to steal the head off James' statue and in the process thwart a mugging. This spurs Britt to decide they need to become superheroes, but make everyone believe their criminals in order to keep the bad guys guessing.

It has been nearly thirty years since the original TRON made waves with its then groundbreaking visual effects. Visual effects have caught up with the visionary ideas of the digital world of the original, making the sequel a visual treat. Unfortunately, the story is less compelling.

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) idolized his father Kevin (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), a brilliant computer programming who dreamed of creating a perfect world inside the computer. He called this world The Grid and promised to show it to Sam one day, but then he disappeared. Sam has grown despising what ENCOM, the company his father ran. Each year he plays a prank on the company to get under their skin. Then his father's old partner Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, TV's BABYLON 5) comes to him with news that he's received a page from his father's old office. When Sam goes to investigate, he stumbles across his father's work and inadvertently gets transported into The Grid.

In the most overtly allegorical of C.S. Lewis' NARNIA series, the heroes battle the demons inside rather than white witches or evil kings. While director Michael Apted never mentions any one religion, the Christian undertones of this installment are more apparent than any of the other films. Vanity, jealousy, greed and pride are the villains here.

Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) dream of returning to Narnia where they were a queen and king. In England, they are stuck as simple teens living with their aunt and uncle during World War II. Instead of battling mythical creatures, they're stuck fighting with their stuffy cousin Eustace (Will Poulter, SON OF RAMBOW). Then one day a painting in their room comes to life and transports them back to Narnia and onto the sailing vessel of King Caspian (Ben Barnes). At first they are unsure why they have been called back, but soon learn of the evil pull of Dark Island, which has been trapping people in its seductive green mist.

During the course of their adventure, the heroes will encounter slave traders, dufflepuds, dragons, magic ponds and a giant sea serpent that makes CLASH OF THE TITANS' Kraken look like a sea slug. Along the way, the evil mist will play on the characters' weaknesses. Lucy wishes she were as beautiful as her older sister Susan (Anna Popplewell). Edmund continues to struggle with feeling like a second wheel, only this time it's not to his older brother Peter (William Moseley), but to the new king Caspian. Eustace is susceptible to… well… just name the sin. The obnoxiously practical young man is mentored by the brave warrior mouse Reepicheep (Simon Pegg, SHAUN OF THE DEAD).

Disney's 50th animated feature has a bit of everything that one might think of when one thinks of a Disney animated film. For the classic touch, there is a princess rescued by a dashing male hero, a wicked mother, animal sidekicks, musical numbers and magic. For the modern touch, there are irreverent splashes and gags galore. The former parts work much better than latter and in the end traditional storytelling wins the day.

Rapunzel (Mandy Moore, SAVED!) was saved from death as a child by a magic flower that gave her hair magical healing properties. Gothel (Donna Murphy, SPIDER-MAN 2) had been using said flower for years to turn back the effects of time, so she decides to kidnap the baby princess and raise her as her own, keeping her locked away in a tower in the forest. The devious woman tells the girl that the world is evil and that she is safer hidden away. But the now 18 year old girl wants to venture out and see firsthand the lanterns that happen to rise in the distance on her birthday.

This is the least rewarding of the cinematic HARRY POTTER experiences mainly because it doesn't satisfyingly work as a film on its own. Unlike the LORD OF THE RINGS series, each film worked as a solo film, while setting up the continuing journey. DEATHLY HALLOWS - PART 1 tries to find its EMPIRE STRIKE BACK moment to end on, but without making Voldemort declare he is Harry's father, this film left me wanting more, but not in a good way. And yet I want more.

This PART 1, PART 2 nonsense will mean nothing after July 2011. After that DEATHLY HALLOWS can be enjoyed on DVD or Blu-ray or whatever comes next in home entertainment as one complete film. But because I am not clairvoyant I can't comment on the complete DEATHLY HALLOWS, because I have only seen half the film. PART 1 is kind of like the equivalent of tantric sex; all build up and no climax. But for POTTER fans, it's still sex… unless they're kids, because it's a family franchise, right?

Since the beginning of cinema there have been adaptations of Charles Dickens’ classic holiday ghost tale. Many think of the 1951 version starring Alastair Sim. I have a soft spot for A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL for its great humor. Director Robert Zemeckis makes his version with puppets as well, only digital puppets. Performance capture has allowed him to do anything with the tale.

Jim Carrey brings to life Scrooge, who here is sickly thin and more vulture-like than ever before. With the performance capture technology, Carrey is able to play the three ghosts as well. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a flicker of fire, who speaks with an ethereal tone. The closest to Dickens’ description I’ve ever seen. The Ghost of Christmas Present is as he has been portrayed before as a large jolly fellow. But I really like his haunting transformation as the hour chimes and he chuckles as he turns to bones. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is often just a shadow creeping on the wall and pointing a skeletal finger.