Toy Story 3: The highest grossing animated film ever

His catchphrase is to go "to infinity, and beyond" and, if his box office receipts are anything to go by, Buzz Lightyear is on course to set sky-high standards of success for any big-screen animated character to follow.

Toy Story 3, in which Lightyear stars, is set to become the first animation to take $1bn at box offices globally after becoming the highest grossing animation ever, this weekend.

Its characters, including spaceranger Buzz, cowboy Woody and resourceful Barbie, helped Disney/Pixar gross $920m in global ticket sales since it opened in June. The previous record holder was DreamWorks Animation's Shrek 2, which raked in $919.8m.

Toy Story 3's success makes it the fourth highest grossing Disney movie ever, behind Johnny Depp blockbusters Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($1.07bn), Alice in Wonderland ($1.02bn) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ($961m).

Cinemagoers' love affair with animation shows no sign of waning. Shrek Forever After is currently pulling in viewers across the country, while Lionsgate's 3D wolf animation Alpha and Omega hits the big screen in October. Universal's Despicable Me, which knocked the latest Twilight instalment off the top of the box office on its release in the United States last month, is also due out in the UK in October.

Charles Gant, film editor at Heat magazine and a box office analyst, said studios had invested in their own animation divisions over recent years after seeing the success of DreamWorks Animation in rivalling Disney. "3D has been fantastic for animation and also the family market just keeps getting bigger," he added. "It's very rare a big studio loses money on a family film."

Toy Story 3 is the latest in a line of hits for Pixar, which also created Up, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. The film has been credited with reducing grown men to tears with its themes of growing up, separation and loss.

Helen Nabarro, head of animation direction at the National Film and Television School, said the success of the Toy Story franchise and feature-length animations such as Oscar winner Up was down to sophisticated scripts and strong stories. "It can be a recognisable human world but with this extra fantasy that you believe," she explained.

Ms Nabarro, who was an executive producer on the BBC's Robbie the Reindeer films, said animation was "very much mainstream" now. It may have been viewed as "kids' stuff" in the past but now targeted adults.

Aardman's Wallace & Gromit did animation a "massive service" in showing that the genre could work for both adults and children, she added.

Hollywood's top actors are increasingly keen to voice animated characters. Steve Carell features as Gru in Despicable Me, while Brad Pitt will voice hero Metro Man opposite Will Ferrell's villain in DreamWorks Animation's Megamind this December.

The Expendables

A 101 percent action packed movie which brings together the greatest action stars. You have action veterans Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, and Jet Li; plus you have new age action stars like Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin.

The movie is full of blood and gore and lots of fighting and explosions. You will surely remain glued to your seats till the every end and gasping at the amount of action and killing the movie has.

Though, “The Expendables” is a far match against Ninja Assassin and other Japanese-made hardcore action movies, this is the first American Hollywood film that shows a seeming hardcore action.

The Expendables is not only action though for it has a crisp comedy and fun side to it. The dialogue of the characters are at point very hilarious. Two of the dialogues I remember are one from the scene between Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis and another between Jet Li and Stallone.

“Never mind him, he wants to be President,” says Stallone when Schwarzenegger refused the job in Vilena, South America.

Then there is the dialogue where Jet Li is trying to justify a raise in pay because he thinks he works harder because he is smaller. Then, when Lundgren tries to chase them and kill them, Stallone asks Jet Li to go to the back of the car and shoot the enemies. Stallone reasons out that he needs to do that because he is small.

For those who are seeking an intelligent and a movie with depth, well you will be frustrated with The Expendables. The plot of this movie is very typical and I would say shallow. It fails to even stir someones imagination and the love story also fails to excite the audience.

Do not expect awesome storyline and dialogue from The Expendables since this movie is probably done just to give us a taste of all the action starts packed in one movie doing what action stars do.

The musical score for The Expendables is also great and it fits every sequence. It is like you are being driven inside the movie in every music played on the action-packed scenes.

I do recommend this movie since it is one action act that someone should not miss.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Having retooled and neatly anglicised the zombie movie on Shaun of the Dead and the cop thriller in Hot Fuzz, director Edgar Wright finally has the Hollywood budget his imagination so richly deserves.

But he's not done with his genre-splicing yet.

In fact, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is quite the mash-up, a post-adolescent romantic comedy combined with a videogame fantasy and shot through with indie-rock cool and all sorts of editing sleight-of-hand.

Its closest cinematic cousin is this year's Kick-Ass, another Brit-directed geek empowerment fantasy coming, as this does, from a left-field graphic novel - Canadian Bryan Lee O'Malley's manga-influenced series about 22-year-old Toronto slacker-bassist Scott and the pursuit of the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers.

Here Wright has compressed that six-part series into one mad fireworks display of a movie. One which runs on videogame logic, breaking out into high-flying chop socky - complete with points and power-ups - at every possible opportunity.

It also references everything from 90s sitcoms to 60s supergroups (there are characters called Stephen Stills and "Young Neil"), plus superhero movies - Chris Evans of the Fantastic Four turns up looking like Wolverine while Brandon Routh, the last big screen Superman, is now possessed of vegetarian superpowers.

And it's set in snowy Toronto. Though you'll only hear Scott say "Ay?" once.

So it doesn't lack for style, energy or - even with its magpie tendencies - originality.

Underneath all the flash, its story is an old one: Boy has to fight for the girl of his dreams.

Only Scott must fight Ramona's "seven evil exes" Mortal Kombat-style. They come in all shapes and sizes - fortunately, for running times' sake, two of them are twins.

Good thing he's put his time in at the arcade with Knives Chau, his teenage girlfriend who is about to have her heart broken by this lethargic lothario, even if she is the number one fan of his pop-punk band Sex Bob-Omb which is aiming at the big record deal at an upcoming contest.

That battle of the bands finale scene is something. The opposing groups' music becomes transformed into giant game monsters which fight for supremacy.

All of which might say something about how the joystick generation has displaced music from the centre of pop culture. Though this isn't exactly striving for deeper meaning, just flashy geeky cool and yet more of those fight scenes which leave the defeated decimated into a pile of coins.

Yes it does become wearying along the way and there are one or two evil exes too many. And despite Michael Cera employing his much-practised dweebish charm as Scott, he's more convincing as a virtual fighter than a lover. Mary Elizabeth Winstead certainly makes Ramona feisty and alluring. But while little cartoon hearts flutter from the pair's embraces, there's just not enough to make you care about whether they end up together.

The film certainly kicks bottom and stays amusing as Scott progresses through the levels.

The Bounty Hunter's the Exact Opposite of Sexy and Hilarious!

Milo (Butler) and Nicole (Aniston) are ex-spouses still licking their wounds. Since the split, Milo got himself booted off the police force and works as a bounty hunter. She's become a hotshot reporter.

When she ditches a hearing for a minor offense and he's assigned to grab her for jumping bail, calamity and hilarity ensue! No, not really. Somewhere in development, like Milo and Nicole's union, this script took a wrong turn.

Maybe it's the marketing that's misleading. The Bounty Hunter is being sold as a comedy, yet the first 15 minutes are devoid of laughs. Not a peep, twitter or chortle. And it doesn't get much better after that—despite several attempts at jokes and the stars' tremendous efforts to pull funny faces, the script fails miserably to entertain; most of the dialogue is tiresome bickering between our two leads.

The whole affair is very straight-to-DVD. Just think, a quality film could have taken up the precious real estate sucked up by this movie.

The plot actually isn't so bad—it had potential, at least. Nicole's investigation into a suspicious suicide starts to catch up with her, and she and Milo start to poke around while constantly dodging danger.

Unfortunately, it feels like this juicy plot twist comes a good hour and 15 boring minutes into the picture—too little, waaaay too late. What could have been a down-and-dirty Nick-and-Nora road movie is just another flick that should have shipped straight to the video store.

The Runaways Pretty Much Rocks, Despite a Few Sour Notes

This movie about the first all-girl rock band wants it both ways: Yes, the Runaways were awesome, but there was also something more than a little inappropriate about putting teenage singer Currie onstage wearing little but a corset to belt out "Cherry Bomb." And 30 years later, there's still something inappropriate about putting teenage actor Fanning onstage doing the same.

But the film doesn't spend time pondering such things, as former David Bowie/Marilyn Manson video director Floria Sigismondi prefers to revel in the superficial: At times, she seems more in love with period hairdos than anything else, and it needs to be said that blown-out, slo-mo shots of a person's dazed, drug-addled face as signifier for personal downfall is not just Rock Video 101, but David Lynch 101 as well.

Despite all that, the actors make this work, and there is where Sigismondi shines—the recent The Yellow Handkerchief proves that not everybody can get a good performance out of Kristen Stewart, but she's solid here. (Also helpful, the real Jett served as producer to make sure the performance, including Stewart's guitar-playing and singing, was spot-on).

Fanning...well, she's always been good. No surprise. But it's Michael Shannon—generally most recognizable for playing quiet psychopaths—who dominates the screen here as the flamboyant Fowley.

Fans of '80s teen movies will want to keep an eye out for Fast Times at Ridgemont High's Robert Romanus as a dorky guitar teacher who gets nowhere when he tries to teach Joan Jett acoustic folk songs.

How to Train Your Dragon Swift, Smart and Only Slightly Dangerous

Meet Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), a fledgling Viking so gawky that a puffy fur vest and boots only make him look scrawnier. Hiccup is the son of Stoic (Gerard Butler), who is everything that his son is not: a brilliant side of beef with a long track record against the traditional Viking enemy: dragons.

Dragons—dubbed with terrifying breed names like Night Fury and Silent Death—invade the town regularly, picking off cottony sheep and setting fire to pretty much everything else. Hiccup, wanting to fit in, aims to kill dragons someday, just like his dad. Trouble is, he doesn't appear to be very good at it.

Turns out, Hiccup isn't so much a dragon killer as he is a dragon whisperer. After downing a mysterious, inky-black Night Fury one night, Hiccup tracks it down and frees it, creating a friendship borne of equal parts common interest and lunches of raw fish.

If the black dragon Toothless looks familiar, you may be a connoisseur of good character design; animator Chris Sanders, who created Stitch for Lilo & Stitch, is a codirector here.

Sanders elicits the same rounded head and nubby teeth that made the Disney alien so unforgettable. Unlike way too many movie animal companions, Toothless has his own agenda and doesn't bother with sentimental crap, which makes his sleek little head all that much more endearing. One wonders if Sanders, or someone else close to the production, has a very young, very energetic house cat.

Critics may quibble with the voice casting—why are Stoic and Gobber the town blacksmith (Craig Ferguson) Scottish, and Hiccup and his love interest, Astrid (America Ferrera) not? But, eh, it's a cartoon, and the voice actors, with only a couple of exceptions, avoid the smug, contemporary delivery style that has made other DreamWorks animation titles (Shrek, anyone?) so insufferable.

In fact, almost everything about this movie feels fresh and original in Sanders' hands. The animation is some of the best we've seen since Monsters, Inc.—some might even say Avatar—and there are plenty of jokes for the grown-ups as well as the kids. But it's the core relationship between dork and dragon—no sap, just two solid characters—that makes the film more than your average kid flick.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Without giving away a spoiler, the end includes a bit of plot that shows admirable braveness on the part of the producers and studio; queasy or overprotective parents may not agree.

Clash of the Titans Is Hit and Myth

In this revisionist telling of Greek legend, humankind is beginning to rebel against the capricious gods of Mount Olympus, so the angry Hades (Ralph Fiennes, apparently with laryngitis) gets the blessing of big brother Zeus (Liam Neeson) to whup some mortal ass. Little does Zeus know, Hades has a bigger scheme in motion: Terrorized by monsters, including the Kraken, mortals will hate and fear the gods even more. This is a boon to the underworld god, who thrives on such emotions, but Zeus needs prayer and love to stay strong. Stir up human anger enough, and he'll be vulnerable to a hostile takeover from below.

Caught in the middle is Perseus (Sam Worthington), illegitimate son of Zeus, who has his own grudge against Hades for killing his adoptive parents. Told by immortal beauty Io (Gemma Arterton) that killing the Kraken may weaken Hades enough for him to be harmed, Perseus sets out to do so on a quest that involves serpent-haired Medusa (Natalia Vodianova), giant scorpions, Hades' deformed disciple Calibos (Jason Flemyng), and wooden Djinn of the Deus Ex Machina tribe. All in after-the-fact 3-D, which isn't awful but also ain't worth the extra ticket premium, since the only thing that really pops out is the end credits.

Children of the '80s tend to have fond memories of the original Clash of the Titans, yet for its day, it was almost exactly the equivalent of modern mindless blockbusters. Looking at it objectively, it is fun, but really little more than an effects showcase and an amusing game of spot-the-stunt-casting. That the stop-motion monsters are seen as somehow more charming than the newer digital ones seems merely emblematic of a general lack of respect for computer animators, relative to those who worked with tangible models.

So while there's much that can be mocked here, the new battles are just as fun in their own way—the scorpions in particular are awesome. This is Clash by way of Lord of the Rings, Todd McFarlane action figures and God of War: The eye candy is phenomenal!

Unfortunately, Perseus is a bit of a jerk in this version. Far from the noble hero who wanted to marry the princess and save the city in the original, he's now simply on a personal vendetta. Said princess is a total afterthought as a character, and new love interest Io, who might as well be renamed Little Miss Exposition, is kinda icky when you stop to think about the fact that she's been watching over Perseus since his infancy.