The movie is a compromised mess, but that didn't stop Lakeview Terrace from rising to the top of the box-office heap this weekend. I'd like to think it did modestly well ($15.6 million) because audiences were interested in what director Neil La Bute, author of In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors, The Shape of Things and other blistering intrusions into the male psyche, might do with a conventional crime thriller. Not much, as it turns out. But it's clear that audiences were lining up to see Samuel L. Jackson's L.A. cop get all up the face of his white neighbor (Patrick Wilson) as well as the other movie competition. Last week's top grosser, the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading still had the heat to take second place with $11.3 million, but poor Ricky Gervais found the prickly fun he added to Ghost Town falling on dead houses for a paltry $5.1 million and a tired eighth place. Depressed yet? All of us should be. I'd like some input on why Sam Jackson can still bring in the crowds. And it's time to ask an important question about Big Sam.

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In this week's video review, Peter Travers dives into four films competing for your undivided attention this weekend. Click above for the Rolling Stone film critic's take on the Keira Knightley historical vehicle The Duchess, Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town, the Ed Harris-helmed Western Appaloosa and the suburban nightmare film Lakeview Terrace.

• Review: Lakeview Terrace

• Review: Ghost Town

• Review: The Duchess

Amid the crap attack this week, led by the supremo trio of flops, Speed Racer, The Love Guru, and 88 Minutes, two movie comedies get classy, anniversary DVD treatments that raise the bar. They would be 1983's Risky Business and 1988's Beetlejuice. I'll let you decide which is the better movie and why, but here's what's offered on the discs.

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Photo: Focus Features
What the hell? The Coen brothers score No. 1 and their biggest box-office opening ever ($19.4 million) with Burn After Reading, a movie that most critics rated "meh." I still hold that a middling outing from the Coens is worth more a hit from a hack (hello, Tyler Perry). What really burns me is that a hunk of cinematic excrement like John Avnet's Righteous Kill can actually amass $16.5 million despite crushing reviews and a trailer that lets you know exactly what kind of junk it is. Is it residual affection for the star shine of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino? Many reviews of Righteous Kill argue that De Niro and Pacino haven't made a good film in decades. So I've put together a test. Below is a list of films that De Niro and Pacino made just in this decade so far, 13 each. Look and weep or cheer. Check out the list, then we'll talk.

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In his weekly video review, Peter Travers takes a look at the Coen brothers caper comedy Burn After Reading, the De Niro/Pacino team-up Righteous Kill and the long-in-gestation The Women. Does the Coens' Oscar follow-up live up to their previous work, or does it stand in the shadow of the combination of two legendary actors? Also, what's up with Meg Ryan's face? Click above for the answers to these burning questions.

• Review: Burn After Reading

• Review: Righteous Kill

• Review: The Women

Photo: Lionsgate Films
Vacation’s over. With the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading opening tomorrow, the fall movie season swings into high gear. I’m ready. But first I need to vent about a few things. Don’t get me started about the following topics:

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The summer is nearly over, which means Hollywood packs in their tentpole blockbusters and rolls out their high-minded Oscar bait. But what does Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers think about the fall slate, and which films excite him most? Click above to find out, and check out the full Rolling Stone fall movie preview below.

• Fall Movie Preview: The Smart Season

Steve Coogan pens his own wacky high school musical as an out-of-place drama teacher in "Hamlet 2," while Rainn Wilson writes his rock & roll destiny as a has-been drummer leading a band of high school kids in "The Rocker." Peter Travers reveals which new comedy is worth the trip to the theater.

So I ask you: How did Mamma Mia, with film legend Meryl Streep trilling ABBA songs on screen, become a hit? And how did the director Phyllida Lloyd, who mounted the smash stage production that's still running on Broadway and all stops on the globe, allow Streep to sing her big number, "The Winner Takes It All," with her hair blowing in her face and mouth? Wait, I'm getting off track. How has Mamma Mia! managed to take in over $100 million at the movie box office? Is it the success of the stage show? Is it seeing Streep pull out all the stops? Is it female audiences starved for something about them that isn't Sex and the City? I can buy all those reasons. But please don't tell me it's the ABBA songs, sung bright (Streep, Christine Baranski), bad (Dominic Cooper) and bloody awful (PIerce Brosnan). On screen, at least, you have Greece and famous faces to distract you. But on CD the songs, overdubbed and overorchestrated, can drive you nuts. They sound like commercial jingles played on a continuous loop until you want to scream or leap off a tall building screaming, "MAKE IT STOP!" And yet the Mamma Mia soundtrack is currently the best selling CD in America. No shit. I want to know why. Watching Mamma Mia made me think of the state of the Broadway musical, the kind with original songs and not a jukebox compendium of ABBA, Billy Joel, Elvis or the Four Seasons. Is the original musical dead? The answer is NO, and I have three terrific examples, all available on CD:

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