Avatar

Avatar... the film to destroy all other films. At least, it destroyed all other films at the box office, and this first place it has earned is well-deserved. I, myself, went to see the movie, and I give it three thumbs up. The movie is pretty long, but I definately didn't mind sitting through it as it was so well done. So yea, pretty awesome.
Avatar takes place in the year 2154, on the moon Pandora, in Alpha Centauri. Humans have come to this moon to mine for a precious element, unobtanium, but have run into trouble with the moon's native inhabitants. The moon is full of dangerous beasts, as well as the indigenous species, the Na'vi. At first, in the movie, the humans and Na'vi stay away from each other, but as it goes on the humans want to mind underneath the Na'vi's home tree. This results in conflict.
The movie is named after the genetically altered Na'vi bodies that the main human characters used to interact with the species. Eventually, the main character becomes attached to the Na'vi, after spending time with them, and even falls in love. He fights with the Na'vi, and wins the battle against the humans, forcing them to leave for Earth. In the end of the movie, the main character is able to permanently remain in his Avatar body, and become the Na'vi people's chief.
The movie had an enormous budget at close to $300 million, but it made good use of every penny. It also made up for this enormous budget by grossing over 2 billion dollars worlwide, which was a new record. Avatar sunk Titanic's previous world record, and continue to bring in more and more money. Obviously, they won't be taking it out of theatres too soon.
Avatar also has been being worked on for a long time. The director came up with the idea in 1994, and planned to start filming after he finished Titanic. He decided to postpone making the movie, though, as he did not feel technology was advanced enough to realise his vision. More majour work didn't start again until 2005-2006. Supposedly, for every frame of the movie (1/24 of second) took about 48 hours to complete.