New to Home Video: 'Mamma Mia!,' 'Mummy,' 'Burn After Reading'

About a month ago, we talked about a new practice studios and distributors were trying that broadened the number of days in a week that DVDs would be released. There are serious problems with it, not the least of which is that Warner Bros. can release something on Sunday and Disney on Thursday, and then Fox could decide that Friday suits them best. There's no rhyme nor reason to it.Witness this week, which is really the first time we're having so many titles fly at us more than once a week. I guess the thought process is, if you release a movie on Saturday instead of the following Tuesday, then you get the weekend traffic. Of course, if you just released it the previous Tuesday, not only would everybody know it would be out that weekend, but you'd buy yourself even more days of in-store traffic. I suspect a component of this is also to un-train consumers from the standard Tuesday release as we go more and more to a digital downloading preference. All you have to do is check online, and if it's not there on Tuesday, check back Friday and you're not out anything. So as we look at the DVDs for this week, remember that they aren't all out yet. Mamma Mia! (December 16)

Quick: Name the top three money makers outside of the U.S. this year. You'd never guess Indiana Jones was first, Dark Knight was second, and Mamma Mia! was third. Let's give a round of applause to the adaptation of the ABBA-based stage musical because it opened directly against The Dark Knight and has made almost $600 million worldwide.

It's earned 1000% of its budget. That doesn't happen too often. For Quantum of Solace to pull that off, it would need to make $2 billion.Even though it got modest to weak reviews, Mamma Mia!, perhaps more than any other film this year, found its audience. They didn't even care that Pierce Brosnan sings like a half-eaten sea lion.(Take a chance on our review)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (December 16)There have been much better part threes in the history of cinema, true, but I suppose there have been worse. I was watching some of the DVD over the weekend (with all the awards movies right now, fitting in DVDs has been tough), and I think if it had kept Rachel Weisz instead of going with Maria Bello - not that they had a choice - this would have been about 20% better. But that still only would've made it marginally decent.The story is maybe not as cheesy as part two, but there's zero chemistry and the big battle scenes failed to register with me.(Read our full review)
The House Bunny (December 19)If Anna Faris becomes a kind of female comedic megastar, the likes of which we've not seen in a long, long time, we'll always have to come back to this movie. By all rights, it shouldn't have been a hit. It looked bad, it has no other big name cast members, and it came out while enormo summer movies were still dominating the landscape. And yet, the modest comedy about a Playboy bunny who got too old for the mansion and had to eke out an existence as a sorority house mother did pretty good business. We love Anna; she's great at what she does. But unfortunately, she's been obscured by average movies most of her career. Let's hope this is a launching pad for her.
Traitor (December 19)One of my more underrated movies of the year is this taut thriller starring the great Don Cheadle and the also-great Guy Pearce. Cheadle plays a man arrested on charges of terrorism in Africa even though he has no background in terrorist activity. Pearce is the FBI agent that interrogated him and has followed his actions ever since. All the while, a terrorist plot is threatening to hatch in the United States, and the lines turn out to be a lot less straight than you'd think.Curious fact of the week: This film is based on an original idea by Steve Martin, who at this stage of his career should not be giving away what few good original ideas he seems to muster.(Here's our review)
Burn After Reading (December 21)Are you tired of these staggered release dates yet? The new Coen Brothers flick comes out Sunday, and even though it's not in their upper tier of films, the Coens had been struggling just as much to find a good comedy over the past five years as they had been hurting for a good drama before No Country for Old Men. And Burn After Reading is without question a good comedy.The cast is terrific and well-known: Clooney, Pitt, McDormand, Swinton, Malkovich, and Richard Jenkins. But the guy who steals it, absolutely walks away with the movie without ever leaving an office chair, is J.K. Simmons. The movie's good before you see him, but he gives it one of the great endings in a while. Very funny.(Review!)
Death Race (December 21)Strictly speaking, I wouldn't call this a remake of Death Race 2000; it's what is more commonly known by the annoying designation, "re-imagining." Only a few of the pieces from the original Roger Corman movie remain - some of the structure, but not much, a few characters. Cars. There are still cars.And actually, Death Race isn't all bad. I'm looking forward to seeing it again to see if it caught me in a good mood or what, but I came away from watching it in the theater not entirely unimpressed. The action was fast-paced, the stunt driving was very good, and Joan Allen gave one of those classic cold hard bitch performances that was even more fun to watch than the race. And, for the record, it made Stephen King's top ten movies of 2008, so...(Death Review)