The big guns still dominate proceedings at our cinemas (at least until Thursday when the little art-house films all gang up for the Festival). Last week was hardly worth writing a column about as all the big distributors sensibly made way for Will Smith's annual 4th of July blockbuster, Hancock (Readings, Empire, Regent-on-Manners & Embassy).

This week, the ABBA musical (that had a season at the Civic in Auckland a couple of years ago) Mamma Mia! leads the pack. Justifiably described as a phenomenon since the stage show launched in London in 1996, the film features Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth singing and dancing their way through the ABBA back catalogue. It's been trailered for months now, so awareness should be pretty high and it's playing everywhere: Readings, Empire, Penthouse, Embassy, Lighthouse Petone, Regent-on-Manners.

[The rest of this week's new releases summarised after the jump]

Trailing in Mamma Mia!'s wake is the latest classic tv remake, Get Smart starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway (Readings, Regent & Empire) and Meet Dave, Eddie Murphy in family-friendly mode as a starship built to look like a human that arrives on Earth and falls in love. As you do. You can find Meet Dave at Readings, Regent & Empire).

Almost invisible to the naked eye is a documentary called Allan Wilson, Evolutionary which has a short pre-Festival season at the Paramount. I couldn't find anything about it, not even at the Paramount site itself.

These won't get reviewed at Funerals & Snakes (or Capital Times) until a week on Wednesday as next week I'm doing a Film Festival preview - which I will cross-post here at about the same time. So, you're on your own until then, people.