Amp/Speaker selection help.

Just a general suggestion regarding your decision to go with monitors--I would strongly consider floor standers. You will still need a base for the monitors and there are plenty of floorstanders that will give you far better sound (especially for the dynamics of movies) and take up the same footprint on your floor. If you're really starved for space/cash and can't get a subwoofer then I think the monitors would be an even bigger mistake. I'll leave it to others for specific suggestions.

Ok, I'm diving back in. While I agree that 5.1 for movies is vastly superior to 2 channel, I would advise doing it in a stepwise fashion, or, at the very least, don't let the two channel audio get pushed to the backburner by getting some boxed ready-to-go 5.1 setup. If you happen to be the only person ever to step foot in these forums with self-control when it comes to budgeting for audio and $2500-3000 is your absolute limit, I'd do this: Set a $200 max on surround speakers, pick up a beefy receiver used and try to limit it to under $1000 (which will get you quite a bit in a used receiver). Cambridge Soundworks has very inexpensive center speakers which really aren't all that bad for dialogue--used, easily under $100. Spend the rest on the front pair of speakers. With your budget and criteria, this will provide you with the best 2 channel possible and I really don't think your movie experience will suffer at all. In addition, if (who are we kidding...when) you decided to upgrade, replacing the surrounds or the center won't be a hard hit and you will have a solid base (your front speakers) to build off of.

For what it's worth, this is the route I took at the beginning. A decent receiver ($800 new--I didn't know about used audio then), $1500 Vienna Acoustic Bachs, $250 Cambridge Soundworks Center (Used, sub $100 now), $200 Boston Acoustic dipole surrounds. It was really quite entertaining for movies and sweet sounding for two channel all things considered.