Two terms you may come across with torrents is seeders and leechers.
When a person first puts a file on a torrent they are the only seeder as they are the only one who has a copy. So the number of seeders will be shown as 1.
The people who then start downloading the file are called leechers. So if ten people started to download the file there would be 10 leechers.
Suppose 3 of these leechers got the whole file then they would then become seeders, so there would now be 4 seeders and only 7 leechers.
Suppose 10 more people started leeching, there would then be 17 leechers.
As more people get the whole file they become seeders, and therefore the number of seeders goes up, and so it goes on.
Once people have downloaded a movie they may copy it to CD or DVD and delete the file from their hard disk so that is one less seeder.
If a file has been available for months it could be that many people have downloaded it but then deleted it from their hard disk, so the number of seeders could go down to just 2 or 3.
So if you plan to download anything from a torrent try to find a fairly new file (less than a couple of weeks old) and look at the number of seeders, the more the better.
Try to avoid any file that has only one seeder. This may mean the person who is seeding it either has a very slow connection, or turns their PC off now and again.
Once you get to 4 or 5 seeders that is probably a good time to start downloading
It can take a while to get the hang of it so good luck.