Audio commentary

Oliver Stone’s W. is similar to his other movies about American presidents (JFK, Nixon), which is to say these films are much more about Stone’s imagined versions of reported events than they are alleged reenactments. As such, W. is Stone’s case for what he sees as the absurdity of George W. Bush’s ascendance to the White House and especially the arrogant blunder of the Iraq War. Josh Brolin is very good as the miscreant son of George H. W. Bush (James Cromwell), Vice President to Ronald Reagan and 41st president of the United States.

Debra Messing (TV's Will & Grace) shines in this hilarious romantic comedy about the surprising road to finding true love. Kat Ellis (Messing) is determined to attend her younger sister's wedding with a date. Rather than face the ridicule of her family and in order to show up her ex-fiance, she resorts to the Yellow Pages to find a last-minute escort, Nick (Dermot Mulroney, My Best Friend's Wedding). His dashing good looks and quick-witted charm may win over her family. But will they win over Kat?

Hacker/arcade owner Kevin Flynn is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate known as Master Control and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the ultimate blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron to outmaneuver the Master Control Program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game.

Everyone loves musical smackdowns--and Pitch Perfect is full of great ones. Pitch Perfect is like Bring It On crossed with the Step Up movies, flavored with a heavy dose of TV's Glee and the Straight No Chaser boys. All of this is set appealingly on a college campus, with charming actors and a very funny script that will entertain fans, truly, from 10 to 90. The plot in Pitch Perfect follows the character of college freshman Beca (a delightful Anna Kendrick) as she decides to join her school's a cappella women's singing group.

Are all relationships based on lies? Jake Bianski runs a fish market in north Boston, surrounded by Italians. For years, he's carried a torch for Isabella, an ex-girlfriend now married with three children and no interest in Jake. Yet, he tells everyone she's his girlfriend, including Marisa, a veterinarian his employees set him up with at the Italian singles club. She's interested in him until he tells her about his girlfriend, then he's persistent in asking her to be his friend.

The "cell phone thriller" is becoming a genre unto itself, and Eagle Eye should be considered a key example of the form. Frankly preposterous but compulsively watchable, this movie puts Shia LaBeouf in a mess of trouble instigated by a mysterious telephone voice. If he doesn't follow orders, dire things will happen--although when he does follow orders, the consequences are pretty dire, anyway. Also being blackmailed is a single mom (Michelle Monaghan) receiving similar phone calls.

The dazzling Bollywood superstar Tannishtha Chatterjee shines in the British film Brick Lane, based on the best-selling novel by Monica Ali. The film is true to the delicately nuanced novel, which tells the story of a young Bangladeshi girl's being married off to a young man living in England--sight unseen. The heroine, Nazneen, as played by Chatterjee, is humble and obedient, and if mildly unhappy in her new life, she's loath to be vocal about it.

Alternating between cosmic splendor and human squalor, Agora is a movie of unusual ambition. In the last days of the Roman Empire, the Egyptian city of Alexandria is torn between the aristocratic pagan society and the emerging, rough-and-tumble Christians. As this broad cultural conflict teeters violently back and forth, the scientist-philosopher Hypatia (Rachel Weisz, The Brothers Bloom, The Fountain) struggles to resolve the motion of the planets with her belief in celestial perfection.

Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, TV's The Office), stars in the hilarious comedy that's bursting with charm. Advice columnist Dan Burns (Carell) is an expert on relationships, but somehow struggles to succeed as a brother, a son and a single parent to three precocious daughters. Things get even more complicated when Dan finds out that the woman he falls in love with is actually his brother's new girlfriend.

Bradley Cooper (The A-Team) and two-time Academy-Award® winner Robert De Niro, star in this provocative and action-packed thriller with unlimited surprising twists. Eddie Morra (Cooper), a burnt-out writer, discovers a top-secret pill that unlocks 100% of his brain’s capacity. He instantly acquires mind-bending talents and mesmerizing visions that bring him big money, beautiful women and limitless success.