It’s hard to see just where the Alien Anthology Blu-ray boxset could have been improved. Nominally a collection of the four main films in the franchise, what’s actually been bundled together here is one of the finest DVD or Blu-ray boxsets to date, boasting a series of features that genuinely go into a lot of depth about the movies themselves.

And what movies they are. Alien and Aliens are both exceptional pieces of cinema, and rightly regarded as classics in their own right. Alien 3 , meanwhile, has to be classed as an interesting and muddled failure, yet it’s still got a lot to like about it. Alien: Resurrection ? It’s perhaps the least ambitious of the four films, but in the early stages at least, it’s still with merit.

Each of the films is presently strongly, surprising given the variable DVD versions of each we’ve seen to date. But it’s the mammoth package of extras that set a template for pretty much every other Blu-ray boxset on the market. Spread across six discs, you not only get two cuts of each film, but you get extra features that are as impressive as they comprehensive. Presented brilliantly, it’s an unmissable box set, and you get at least two all-time classics as part of it. -- Jon Foster

Rowan Atkinson reprises his role as the slightly hapless, but still remarkably effective secret agent Johnny English in <em>Johnny English Reborn</em>. Atkinson's deadpan slapstick delivery is in fine form in this sequel to 2003's <em>Johnny English</em>. The sequel actually delivers as an excellent action film, with outstanding cinematography showcasing scenes as diverse as Hong Kong and Tibet, as well as a comedy along the lines of <em>Get Smart</em>. <em>Johnny English Reborn</em> opens in the mountains of Tibet, where a disgraced English has been living in a monastery, learning focus, attentiveness, and martial arts of the avoidance rather than of the über-attack variety. He is suddenly called back into action to serve Her Majesty in the spy agency MI-7, to help take down an international ring of assassins. English is reluctant at first, but then jumps at the chance to avenge the mistakes he made years earlier, and to deploy his new arsenal of skills. <em>Johnny English</em> is a very crisply directed, well-written, and even unpredictable comedy-action spoof, and it just might make fans out of Rowan Atkinson doubters. The timing of the gags is really well done, and Atkinson seems game for just about anything. He is also surrounded by a splendid supporting cast. Gillian Anderson plays the severe new head of MI-7, Pamela, with crisp assurance. Rosamund Pike is the comely Kate, a potential love interest for Agent English. And Daniel Kaluuya plays newbie Agent Tucker, who is assigned to accompany English, and who brings skills (and baggage) of his own. Director Oliver Parker, known mostly for his remakes of classics like <em>Othello</em> and <em>The Importance of Being Earnest</em>, brings a sure vision and entertaining pace to <em>Johnny English Reborn</em>. There's some crude humor, mostly in the form of blows to various groins, but there's no bad language or over-the-top grossness, so <em>Johnny English Reborn</em> is suitable for older kids and teens. --<em>A.T. Hurley</em>

From the first spell to the final battle! The entire eight-film Harry Potter collection is now available for you to own.



<br /> Join Harry, Hermione and Ron from their first year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone all the way through to Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2. In the epic finale, the battle between the good and evil forces of the wizarding world escalates into an all-out war. The stakes have never been higher and no one is safe. But it is Harry Potter who may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice as he draws closer to the climactic showdown with Lord Voldemort.<br /><br /> It all starts and ends here.<br /><br /> Titles Comprise:<br /><br /> Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone (2001)<br /> Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (2002)<br /> Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (2004)<br /> Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)<br /> Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007)<br /> Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (2009)<br /> Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)<br /> Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)<br /><br /><strong>Special Features</strong>



<br /><strong>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</strong><br /> Create your own Picture-in-Picture commentary<br /> J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life<br /> Cast members guide to moviemaking<br /> What's on your mind? - Q & A with cast/crew<br /> One-Minute Drills - Cast members sum up their characters



<br /><strong>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1</strong><br /> The Last Days of Privet Drive - Maximum Movie Mode<br /> Hagrid's Motorbike - Maximum Movie Mode<br /> Death Eaters Attack Cafe - Maximum Movie Mode<br /> Creating Dobby and Kreacher - Maximum Movie Mode<br /> Magical Tents! - Maximum Movie Mode<br /> The Return of Griphook - Maximum

The good news is, Dr. Watson does get married. The bad news is, Sherlock Holmes throws his bride off a moving train. Actually, there's even worse news than that--but all will be explained in <em>Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows</em>, the sequel to Guy Ritchie's 2009 hit. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return to their roles as Holmes and Watson, as the duo take on the world's greatest criminal mind, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), a man whose latest scheme has global implications. Sherlockians who prefer their consulting detective to remain in a traditional mode had best look the other way, for the sequel continues Ritchie's vision of Holmes as a hard-punching action hero hurtling through a barrage of special effects sequences. If you can go with that, <em>A Game of Shadows</em> actually improves on the first film: the story makes a little more sense (or possibly the whole thing moves so smoothly you don't notice the illogic), Harris is a delicious villain, and new cast members Noomi Rapace (from the Swedish <em>Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</em> series) and Stephen Fry (playing Sherlock's brother Mycroft, who calls his sibling"Sherlie") add appeal. It's all frivolous and superficial, but the film's playful attitude and breathless forward motion are skillfully managed--and the final note adds just the right punctuation. <em>--Robert Horton</em>

The extended editions of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings present the greatest trilogy in film history in the most ambitious sets in DVD history. In bringing J.R.R. Tolkien's nearly unfilmable work to the screen, Jackson benefited from extraordinary special effects, evocative New Zealand locales, and an exceptionally well-chosen cast, but most of all from his own adaptation with co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, preserving Tolkien's vision and often his very words, but also making logical changes to accommodate the medium of film. While purists complained about these changes and about characters and scenes left out of the films, the almost two additional hours of material in the extended editions (about 11 hours total) help appease them by delving more deeply into Tolkien's music, the characters, and loose ends that enrich the story, such as an explanation of the Faramir-Denethor relationship, and the appearance of the Mouth of Sauron at the gates of Mordor. In addition, the extended editions offer more bridge material between the films, further confirming that the trilogy is really one long film presented in three pieces (which is why it's the greatest trilogy ever--there's no weak link). The scene of Galadriel's gifts to the Fellowship added to the first film proves significant over the course of the story, while the new Faramir scene at the end of the second film helps set up the third and the new Saruman scene at the beginning of the third film helps conclude the plot of the second.

To top it all off, the extended editions offer four discs per film: two for the longer movie, plus four commentary tracks and stupendous DTS 6.1 ES sound; and two for the bonus material, which covers just about everything from script creation to special effects. The argument was that fans would need both versions because the bonus material is completely different, but the features on the theatrical releases are so vastly inferior that the only reason a fan would need them would be if they wanted to watch the shorter versions they saw in theaters (the last of which, The Return of the King , merely won 11 Oscars). The LOTR extended editions without exception have set the DVD standard by providing a richer film experience that pulls the three films together and further embraces Tolkien's world, a reference-quality home theater experience, and generous, intelligent, and engrossing bonus features. --David Horiuchi

When Bryan Singer brought Marvel's X-Men to the big screen, Magneto and Professor X were elder statesmen, but Matthew Vaughn (<em>Kick-Ass</em>) travels back in time to present an origin story--and an alternate version of history. While Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) grows up privileged in New York, Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) grows up underprivileged in Poland. As children, the mind-reading Charles finds a friend in the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and Erik finds an enemy in Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), an energy-absorbing Nazi scientist who treats the metal-bending lad like a lab rat. By 1962, Charles (James McAvoy) has become a swaggering genetics professor and Erik (Michael Fassbender, McAvoy's <em>Band of Brothers</em> costar) has become a brooding agent of revenge. CIA agent Moira (Rose Byrne) brings the two together to work for Division X. With the help of MIB (Oliver Platt) and Hank (<em>A Single Man's </em>Nicholas Hoult), they seek out other mutants, while fending off Shaw and Emma Frost (<em>Mad Men's</em> January Jones), who try to recruit them for more nefarious ends, leading to a showdown in Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union, the good and bad mutants, and Charles and Erik, whose goals have begun to diverge. Throughout, Vaughn crisscrosses the globe, piles on the visual effects, and juices the action with a rousing score, but it's the actors who make the biggest impression as McAvoy and Fassbender prove themselves worthy successors to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The movie comes alive whenever they take centre stage, and dies a little when they don't. For the most part, though, Vaughn does right by playing up the James Bond parallels and acknowledging the debt to producer Bryan Singer through a couple of clever cameos. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

In resourceful orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, an Oliver Twist-like charmer), Martin Scorsese finds the perfect vessel for his silver-screen passion: this is a movie about movies (fittingly, the 3-D effects are spectacular). After his clockmaker father (Jude Law) perishes in a museum fire, Hugo goes to live with his Uncle Claude (Ray Winstone), a drunkard who maintains the clocks at a Paris train station. When Claude disappears, Hugo carries on his work and fends for himself by stealing food from area merchants. In his free time, he attempts to repair an automaton his father rescued from the museum, while trying to evade the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), a World War I veteran with no sympathy for lawbreakers. When Georges (Ben Kingsley), a toymaker, catches Hugo stealing parts for his mechanical man, he recruits him as an assistant to repay his debt. If Georges is guarded, his open-hearted ward, Isabelle (Chloë Moretz), introduces Hugo to a kindly bookseller (Christopher Lee), who directs them to a motion-picture museum, where they meet film scholar René (<em>Boardwalk Empire's</em> Michael Stuhlbarg). In helping unlock the secret of the automaton, they learn about the roots of cinema, starting with the Lumière brothers, and give a forgotten movie pioneer his due, thus illustrating the importance of film preservation, a cause to which the director has dedicated his life. If Scorsese's adaptation of <em>The Invention of Hugo Cabret</em> isn't his most autobiographical work, it just may be his most personal. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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Prepare for the Final Battle!<br /><br /> Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2, is the final adventure in the Harry Potter film series. The much-anticipated motion picture event is the second of two full-length parts.<br /><br /> In the epic finale, the battle between the good and evil forces of the wizarding world escalates into an all-out war. The stakes have never been higher and no one is safe. But it is Harry Potter who may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice as he draws closer to the climactic showdown with Lord Voldemort.<br /><br /> It all ends here.



<strong>Maximum Movie Mode:</strong>

• Aberforth Dumbledore
• Deathly Hallows Costume Changes
• Harry Returns to Hogwarts
• The Hogwarts Shield
• The Room of Requirement Set
• The Fiery Escape
• Neville's Stand
• Molly Takes Down Bellatrix
• Final Farewells from Cast and Crew
• Pottermore Preview
• When Harry Left Hogwarts
• The Goblins of Gringotts
• The Women of Harry Potter
• Deleted Scenes
• Warner Bros. Studio Tour London
• A Conversation with JK Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe

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• <strong>Actors</strong>

Daniel Radcliffe, Ralph Fiennes, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Tom Felton, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, John Hurt, Rhys Ifans, Bonnie Wright, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson & Miranda Richardson

• <strong>Director</strong>

David Yates

• <strong>Certificate</strong>

12 years and over

• <strong>Year</strong>

2011

• <strong>Screen</strong>
• <br /> 2.40:1
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The Old West... where a lone cowboy leads an uprising against a terror from beyond our world.<br /><br /> 1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don't welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford).<br /><br /> It's a town that lives in fear. But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known. Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he's been.



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• <strong>Actors</strong>

Olivia Wilde, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Paul Dano, Noah Ringer, Clancy Brown, Ana de la Reguera, Keith Carradine, David O'Hara, Walton Goggins, Abigail Spencer, Adam Beach, Toby Huss & Chris Browning

• <strong>Director</strong>

Jon Favreau

• <strong>Year</strong>

2011

• <strong>Screen</strong>

Widescreen

• <strong>Languages</strong>

English

After 12 years of thinking about it (and waiting for movie technology to catch up with his visions), James Cameron followed up his unsinkable <em>Titanic</em> with <em>Avatar</em>, a sci-fi epic meant to trump all previous sci-fi epics. Set in the future on a distant planet, <em>Avatar</em> spins a simple little parable about greedy colonizers (that would be mankind) messing up the lush tribal world of Pandora. A paraplegic Marine named Jake (Sam Worthington) acts through a 9-foot-tall avatar that allows him to roam the planet and pass as one of the Na'vi, the blue-skinned, large-eyed native people who would very much like to live their peaceful lives without the interference of the visitors. Although he's supposed to be gathering intel for the badass general (Stephen Lang) who'd like to lay waste to the planet and its inhabitants, Jake naturally begins to take a liking to the Na'vi, especially the feisty Neytiri (Zoë Saldana, whose entire performance, recorded by Cameron's complicated motion-capture system, exists as a digitally rendered Na'vi). The movie uses state-of-the-art 3D technology to plunge the viewer deep into Cameron's crazy toy box of planetary ecosystems and high-tech machinery. Maybe it's the fact that Cameron seems torn between his two loves--awesome destructive gizmos and flower-power message mongering--that makes <em>Avatar</em>'s pursuit of its point ultimately uncertain. That, and the fact that Cameron's dialogue continues to clunk badly. If you're won over by the movie's trippy new world, the characters will be forgivable as broad, useful archetypes rather than standard-issue stereotypes, and you might be able to overlook the unsurprising central plot. (The overextended"take that, Michael Bay" final battle sequences could tax even Cameron enthusiasts, however.) It doesn't measure up to the hype (what could?) yet <em>Avatar</em> frequently hits a giddy delirium all its own. The film itself is our Pandora, a sensation-saturated universe only the movies could create. <em>--Robert Horton</em><br />

<em>The Adventures of Tintin</em> follows the exciting exploits of a young reporter, his dog, a sea captain with a drinking problem, and a couple of bumbling Interpol detectives as they travel from Europe to the Sahara and Morocco in pursuit of a pickpocket, model-ship collectors and long-lost treasure. Steven Spielberg's and Peter Jackson's long-awaited full-length film, based on the original <em>Tintin</em> comics by Hergé, combines the stories"<em>The Secret of the Unicorn</em>,""<em>Red Rackham's Treasure</em>," and"<em>The Crab with the Golden Claws</em>" into a generally fast-paced adventure that feels just a tad too long. <br /><br />The individual stories and the characters Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, and Thompson and Thomson are all quite faithfully represented. The motion-capture animation is similar to that of <em>Polar Express</em> and is both fascinating and a bit odd at times. As in the comics themselves, the characters are highly stylized and instantly recognizable, but Tintin's facial expression is eerily stoic and there's a hint of strangeness that's hard to put a finger on. Snowy is delightfully funny to watch, though he is a bit fluffier than in the original comics, and the real animation standouts are the secondary characters like Thompson and Thomson and Captain Haddock, who somehow seem absolutely perfect.<br /><br />Devoted fans will revel in the abundance of small details that reference the comics and suggest a true love for <em>Tintin</em> on the filmmakers' parts, but even viewers who don't know a thing about the comics will thoroughly enjoy this exciting adventure. (Suitable for ages 7 and older) --Tami Horiuchi<br />