We know how it is: You'd like to go to the movies this weekend, but you're an owl, and they don't typically sell tickets to owls (you hoot all through the movie, disturbing others). But you can have a multiplex-like experience in your tree with the right collection of DVDs. So when someone asks you on Monday, "Hey, did you see Legend of the Guardians this weekend?" you can say, "Hoot!" to your heart's content in response.

INSTEAD OF: Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, in which an adventurous young owl leaves his farm on Tattooine to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom before Zeus releases the Kraken...

WATCH: Happy Feet (2006), in which the flightless penguins of Antarctica are stranded even as their land melts away under them, but they sing and dance a lot anyway. Or try the delightful Paulie (1998), about a lost talking parrot on a quest to find the little girl who loves him and the trouble he gets into along the way. Our feathered friends are less pleasant -- downright evil, in fact -- in Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror flick The Birds (1963). For more action warfare from director Zack Snyder, check out 300 (2006) ... though here the slo-mo battles take place amongst people, not avians.

INSTEAD OF: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, in which Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) returns to slime his adorably retro evil high finance all over a new generation of hotshot young MBAs, including Shia LaBeouf...

WATCH: Wall Street (1987), and see Gekko slime his evil all over Charlie Sheen, as well as try to look cool speaking into a mobile phone the size of a brick. For an entire swamp full of real-life Gordon Gekko-style slime, don't miss the intriguing and infuriating Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), about the criminals who made themselves ultrarich off the backs of ordinary consumers. For more trading shenanigans, check out Boiler Room (2000), in which naive Giovanni Ribisi joins a sham brokerage house selling scam stocks. For more Gekko-era investment opportunities, revisit the charming Working Girl (1988), in which Melanie Griffith sticks it to her sneaky, underhanded cheater of a boss (Sigourney Weaver).

INSTEAD OF: You Again, in which Jamie Lee Curtis must confront her high-school nemesis (Sigourney Weaver again) while her daughter (Kristen Bell) does the same on the occasion of a family wedding...

WATCH: Meet the Fockers (2004), also about the clash between soon-to-be in-laws -- it's a wonder anyone ever gets married with dreadful movies like these filling lovers' heads with horror stories. If you must have more of hack director Andy Fickman, use radiation-proof gloves to handle The Game Plan (2007), in which big tough football guy Dwayne Johnson inherits a fluffy pink little girl, and fake Hollywood cuteness ensues. For more of Jamie Lee Curtis as a put-upon mom, see True Lies (1994), in which she discovers that her husband (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a spy, and gets caught up in one of his adventures. For more Sigourney Weaver in a comedy that's actually funny, check out Galaxy Quest (1999), a Star Trek spoof in which she plays a smart actress who played a ditzy character on a 1960s sci-fi show.

(For alternatives to The Virginity Hit, see my post from a couple weeks back, when it opened in limited release.)

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MaryAnn Johanson never sleeps at FlickFilosopher.com. (email me)