Anything from the Blu Tier of AV Science’s Blu-ray quality list is going to be a winner.
Yeah… that was pretty much the reaction of the sales guy. I must have slept through this summer.
I second the Pixar recommendation.
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride looks stunning on Blu-Ray, and you can usually find it cheap (under $10).
Avatar
Looks to me like Kinthalis doesn’t have a 360 or PS3 yet.
ETA: as for recommendation, get Band of Brothers. Looks great in HD and there’s a picture-in-picture thing where the vets comment on the on-screen action.
I loved that movie. The little girl just stole my heart.
I haven’t seen it yet on Bluray, but I really enjoyed the visuals of The Fountain.
edit: I’m sad to see it only rated a Copper on the ratings link upthread :\
Yeah, so I picked up a copy on the sales guy’s recommendation. Yesterday my daughter rode the team bus 4.5 hours (one way) to a game and said one of the movies they watched was Inception. She said it was really confusing and it sucked… my son chimed in that he heard it was impossible to follow. I guess I’ll be returning it and looking for a Pixar flick.
If the wide discussion was that it sucked you may want to include this next time 
Inception is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s a great movie. It is showing up on many critics’ “Best of 2010” lists and there’s a good chance it will be nominated for multiple Academy Awards.
Your kids might be a little young to appreciate it. You should probably buy them an Adam Sandler movie, or maybe a Shrek movie. Something with lots of fart jokes. 
They are all teens so I think Shrek i out. Fart Jokes are right on though.
Yes, I guess Inception would be a definite case of YMMV. I just saw it on blu-ray last night, and I thought it was brilliant. Excellent effects, solid story (that may be hard to follow if you’re not paying close attention - it involves dreams within dreams).
But anyway, as someone mentioned upthread, your best bets for showing off your system are the big-budget blockbuster type movies (in addition to the nature documentaries already mentioned - Planet Earth and Life are really eye-opening in their clarity and detail). Some SF suggestions:[ul][li]Star Trek (2009)[]Terminator 2[]The Dark Knight[]Avatar[]Iron Man[]Repo Men[]Children of Men[]Daybreakers[]The Fifth Element[/ul]Epics are another good bet; Braveheart and Gladiator are out there (although you have to be careful with Gladiator, as the first blu-ray release was flawed; you want the remastered re-release). Also as someone else mentioned, Pixar flicks are always top-notch. I’d recommend The Fantastic Mr. Fox as well, but that’s a Wes Anderson title, and if you’re not familiar with his humor, might not be to your taste.[/li]
Another benefit of blu-ray is the added capacity for commentaries and bonus features, so if you want to highlight that (in addition to almost all of the above), you could go for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, which uses what Warner Brothers calls “Maximum Movie Mode” and has Ritchie doing picture-in-picture commentary explaining aspects of certain scenes in addition to the usual commentary track. Kevin Smith uses that to good effect on Cop Out, which is not a very good movie but is almost worth it to see Smith explaining (and even mocking) himself in the commentary.
For music titles, I highly recommend The 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Concerts, which is two discs’ worth of awesome rock and roll with picture and sound quality to match. Ladies & Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones features the boys on their 1972 “Exile on Main Street” tour. And Criterion’s Complete Monterey Pop Festival is the best record of that 1967 landmark. (And, umm, if your taste isn’t rock and roll, I’m sorry but I don’t have any music recommendations.)
The classics are also being remastered and re-released in blu, and they look absolutely stunning when done well. Black and white cinematography is really something altogether different than what we’re used to these days. Criterion titles again are always a good bet - they recently released The Night of the Hunter and Chaplin’s Modern Times - Hunter is startlingly clear and Modern Times looks far better than it has any right to at this point.
Let’s see, what else? There’s really a lot of titles now that have received a great blu-ray release, so if you think of your favorite movies, genres, or directors, chances are there will be something in blu for you. Guillermo del Toro’s movies are favorites of mine - Hellboy, Hellboy II, and Pan’s Labyrinth are good examples. The whole Back to the Future trilogy was just recently released. Apocalypse Now was recently released in both a 3-disc “Full Disclosure” edition and a more modest 2-disc edition.
If you’re looking primarily for the best sound and picture quality, more recent releases are probably better bets than re-releases of older films, simply because production (of the big studios especially) is nowadays geared toward both the eventual home video release as well as the theatrical release. There are exceptions, of course (Saving Private Ryan, for instance, looks and sounds great on blu, and Blade Runner looks good), and studios like Criterion specialize in lovingly restoring classics, but by and large the market favors new movies.
But above all - Have fun with the new system!