We know how it is: You'd like to go to the movies this weekend, but you've been abducted by aliens whose ships are raining extraterrestrial plasma death down on our cities. But if you brought along your laptop, you can have a multiplex-like experience with a few DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, "Hey, did you see Skyline this weekend?" you can say, "I had a front row seat."

INSTEAD OF: Morning Glory, in which spunky morning-news producer Rachel McAdams must get her cranky hosts, Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford, working together while they all work to get the ratings up...

WATCH: Broadcast News (1987), in which Holly Hunter's evening news producer finds herself battling her own nerves and the expectations of reporters Albert Brooks and William Hurt. For a more serious look at television journalism and the dumbing down it has been subjected to, don't miss Network (1976), which bitterly satirizes the kind of entertainment-journalism that Morning Glory celebrates. For a reality-based look at what goes on behind the scenes of talk TV, see The Late Shift (1996), about the battle between Jay Leno and David Letterman over hosting duties of The Tonight Show. For another look at a young woman trying to make her stand in a vicious entertainment arena, see The Devil Wears Prada (2006,) also written by Glory screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, in which Anne Hathaway's magazine editor contends with the boss from hell (Meryl Streep).

INSTEAD OF: Skyline, in which alien invaders draw humans to a weird light, and then gobble them up, or something (the plot remains a mystery; the film was not screened for critics)...

WATCH: Independence Day (1996), still one of the most viscerally thrilling alien-invasion movies, even if it is very silly; Skyline appears to be borrowing some of its iconic saucers-over-cities imagery. Or go with Steven Spielberg's recent remake, War of the Worlds (2005), for an absolutely horrifying alien-invasion experience. The aliens have been here for years in District 9 (2009), and are no threat to humanity, but their abandoned ship still hovers over the Johannesburg skyline -- and the film -- in a haunting reversal of the familiar trope Skyline plays with. For a just plain bad alien-invasion flick -- as we can assume the unscreened Skyline also is -- check out the famously awful Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), which features one of the most ill-conceived alien-invasion plans ever.

INSTEAD OF: Unstoppable, in which train men Denzel Washington and Chris Pine try to stop a runaway freight train hauling dangerous chemicals from crashing, exploding, and taking out approximately half of Pennsylvania...

WATCH: Atomic Train (1999), the hilariously awful NBC miniseries about a runaway train loaded with a Russian nuke headed for Denver... unless Rob Lowe can stop it. Or get even dumber with Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), in which Steven Seagal must stop crazy bad guys from doing crazy bad things to their trainload of hostages traveling through the Rocky Mountains. Go more classic with Runaway Train (1985), which endangers the lives of escaped convicts Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, who are hiding out on the train; both actors received Oscar nominations for their performances, so it's probably not as cheesy as it sounds. For more silliness from Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott, see their ridiculous time-travel murder mystery, Deja Vu (2006), which is only slightly more preposterous than Unstoppable.

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MaryAnn Johanson is a one-woman runaway train of movie criticism at FlickFilosopher.com. (email me)