The Dark Knight arrives with tremendous hype (best superhero movie ever? posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger?), and incredibly, it lives up to all of it. But calling it the best superhero movie ever seems like faint praise, since part of what makes the movie great--in addition to pitch-perfect casting, outstanding writing, and a compelling vision--is that it bypasses the normal fantasy ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed By: Christopher Nolan

Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Eric Roberts

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed By: Christopher Nolan

You know you're going to get a different kind of superhero when you cast Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role. And Iron Man is different, in welcome ways. Cleverly updated from Marvel Comics' longstanding series, Iron Man puts billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (that's Downey) in the path of some Middle Eastern terrorists; in a brilliantly paced section, Stark invents an ...

Manufacturer: Paramount Home Entertainment
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges
Directed By: Jon Favreau

More exciting than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian continues the movie franchise based on C.S. Lewis' classic fantasy books. The movie picks up where the first left off... sort of. It's been a year since the Pevensie children--Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley)--returned ...

Manufacturer: Disney
Starring: Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell
Directed By: Andrew Adamson

Hancock turns the standard superhero movie inside-out. The titular character, played by Will Smith, can fly, has super strength and is invulnerable. But he's also a sloppy, arrogant alcoholic who causes millions of dollars in property damage whenever he bothers to fight crime. When he saves the life of a PR agent named Ray (Jason Bateman, Arrested Development), Ray decides to improve ...

Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Starring: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman
Directed By: Peter Berg

The third film in the The Mummy series freshens the franchise up by setting the action in China. There, the discovery of an ancient emperor's elaborate tomb proves a feather in the cap of Alex O'Connell (Luke Ford), a young archaeologist and son of Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, taking over the role from Rachel Weisz). Unfortunately, a curse that turned ...

Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh
Directed By: Rob Cohen

The feverish Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is a very busy sequel that might have looked unhinged in the hands of a less visionary director than Guillermo del Toro. Ron Perlman returns as Hellboy, aka "Red," the Dark Horse Comics demon-hero with roots in the mythical world but personal ties in the human realm. Still working, as he was in Hellboy, for a secret department of the federal ...

Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, James Dodd, Seth MacFarlane
Directed By: Guillermo del Toro

Nearly 20 years after riding his last Crusade, Harrison Ford makes a welcome return as archaeologist/relic hunter Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, an action-packed fourth installment that's, in a nutshell, less memorable than the first three but great nostalgia for fans of the series. Producer George Lucas and screenwriter David Koepp (War of the ...

Manufacturer: Paramount Home Entertainment
Starring: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone
Directed By: Steven Spielberg

A genuinely epic achievement, the 10-part World War II drama Band of Brothers is a television series that makes big-screen Hollywood war movies look small in comparison. Based on the book by historian Stephen Ambrose, the series follows the US 101st Airborne Division's "Easy" E-Company from initial training through D-Day and across Holland, Belgium, Germany and Austria until the end of the ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Damian Lewis, Donnie Wahlberg, Ron Livingston, Scott Grimes, Peter Youngblood Hills

The considerable pleasures of In Bruges begin with its title, which suggests a glumly self-important art film but actually fits a rattling-good tale of two Irish gangsters "keepin' a low profile" after a murder gone messily wrong. Bruges, the best-preserved medieval town in Belgium, is where the bearlike veteran Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and newbie triggerman Ray (Colin Farrell) have been ...

Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
Starring: Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson
Directed By: Martin McDonagh