Here is your weekly shipment of reviewage!

“Ghost Town” is a pretty funny comedy in which Ricky Gervais sees, and is annoyed by, dead people. (My review is at Cinematical.) Of course, if you don’t think Ricky Gervais is funny, you probably won’t care for the film. Then again, if you don’t think Ricky Gervais is funny, then what’s wrong with you?

“Lakeview Terrace” has Samuel L. Jackson, which is always a good thing, but it’s still just a generic thriller about a cop harassing his neighbors. My review is at Film.com.

“Igor” (an animated film about a mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant) and “My Best Friend’s Girl” (in which Dane Cook summons all his acting skills to play a douchebag) are two of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets™. (”Igor” was apparently screened in some cities but not in others.) I’ll definitely have a review of “My Best Friend’s Girl” for Cinematical at some point this weekend.

Then there’s “Towelhead,” in limited release, an uncomfortable and controversial — but funny — film about a 13-year-old Arab-American girl living in Texas during the first Gulf War. It was written and directed by Alan Ball, writer of “American Beauty” and “Six Feet Under,” and it has the same kind of suburban-treachery vibe.

We’ve switched to a new feed for the podcast, but I think existing subscribers will be redirected automatically, so it shouldn’t affect your smooth podcast-listening enjoyment. I forgot to double-check with Jeff that everything was all set before it got late and he went offline. I wouldn’t be surprised if he barges into this post and inserts an update, though.

[JEFF'S FORESHADOWED UPDATE: As of this minute, the old feed is now being redirected to http://feeds.ericdsnider.com/InTheDarkPodcast, and the old "Snide Remarks" podcast feed is being redirected to http://feeds.ericdsnider.com/SnideRemarksPodcast. These are both aliases for the same URLs at feedburner.com, but it gives us control to later move to a different service without having to go through this same craziness. So anyway, your pre-existing iTunes subscriptions, etc., should all redirect immediately; if you have any issues, please email me directly at webmaster (at) the domain you're looking at right now.]

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I’m back from Toronto and glad to be on fresh, freedom-enriched American soil again. I flew home on Sept. 11, which turned out to be not nearly as interesting as I had thought it might be.

The Coen Brothers have a new film in theaters today, “Burn After Reading,” which I enjoyed but did not totally love. It’s a minor Coen work — which, after all, is still better than, say, a major Tyler Perry work.

Speaking of which, Perry’s “The Family That Preys” opens today as one of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets® (movies not screened for critics). I also don’t have a review of the Pacino/De Niro cop thriller “Righteous Kill,” but that’s because it screened when I was in Canada.

I do have a review of “The Women,” a dreadful and unfunny comedy starring a bunch of women. My review is at Cinematical.

As predicted, there is no “In the Dark” podcast this week due to my travels and jet lag and tiredness and malaise. But in general, you can subscribe to the weekly movie podcast using this URL. And you can subscribe to “In the Dark,” the weekly e-mail roundup of new reviews and DVD releases, here.

The only wide release this week is “Bangkok Dangerous,” starring Nicolas Cage in a mullet, and for some reason Lionsgate didn’t feel comfortable letting critics see it before it opened. Imagine that.

So “In the Dark” is light this week, though it does have a review of a fine French thriller called “Tell No One.”

Toronto is nice so far! It’s smells like New York!

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Hoo boy! Do you smell that? That’s the movie studios dumping their leftover crap into theaters because it’s the last weekend of summer. Four wide releases this week, and THREE of them are Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets©®™. I don’t know if we’ve ever had that many in one weekend before. Perhaps this is Hollywood’s most shameful weekend in history.

The one that was screened for critics was “Traitor,” which actually opened Wednesday. I reviewed it for Film.com. It stars Don Cheadle as a man who might be a terrorist. Great cast, a few good ideas, not a very good movie.

The three that the studios were embarrassed by are:

• “Disaster Movie,” which is the latest from the masterminds who brought us “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” and “Meet the Spartans,” which probably tells you everything you need to know right there.

• “Babylon A.D.,” starring Vin Diesel as a mercenary transporting a woman from Russia to America. The director, Mathieu Kassovitz, has already publicly disowned the film, saying Twentieth-Century Fox forced him to water it down, cut 15 minutes out of the running time, and totally ruin it. Generally, if the director of a film tells you it’s lousy, you should go ahead and take his word for it.

• “College,” in which some high school kids go on a “campus preview” weekend at the college; hilarity ensues. The film wants to be the “Animal House” or “American Pie” of the 2000s. I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.

I’ll have reviews of “Disaster Movie” and “College” by tomorrow. I’m seeing them back-to-back this afternoon, so keep me in your prayers. “Babylon A.D.” is still up in the air. Of the three, it’s the one that has the most potential for being entertaining — bad sci-fi films are funnier than bad comedies — but it’s also the one that nobody’s paying me to review, and cramming three Shameful Secrets into one weekend is kind of rough. So we’ll see.

Also reviewed are the terrific indie drama “Frozen River” and the so-so prestige flick “Elegy,” starring Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz’s breasts. (For real! Both of them! They practically have speaking roles!)

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Movie reviews! Behold them in their splendor!

First, if you happen to live in the Portland area, you should check out “Kabluey,” which opens at the Living Room Theaters today. This was the opening-night film at the Oxford Film Festival, which I attended back in February. The director/writer/star, Scott Prendergast, a Portland native, will be at this weekend’s evening screenings for a Q&A, so that’s cool, and it’s a pretty good movie anyway.

“The Rocker,” which opened Wednesday, is a so-so starring vehicle for Rainn Wilson, in a role seemingly originally meant for Jack Black or Will Ferrell. My review is at Cinematical.

“Hamlet 2″ is one of the year’s oddest comedies, and also one of the funniest. It stars Steve Coogan as a loser high-school drama teacher who stages a controversial play that upsets the community. It opens in about 90 theaters today and will go wide next week.

“The House Bunny” stars the brilliant Anna Faris — I’m not kidding, she really does have a great gift for comedy — as an exiled Playboy bunny who becomes house mother to a sorority of misfit college girls. It’s from the writers of “Legally Blonde,” and it shows, but it’s a surprisingly funny movie.

“Death Race” is dumb, obviously, but it’s not even the fun, self-aware kind. Just the dumb kind. And the races — the film’s only real chance to be entertaining — are dull. My review is at Film.com.

“Man on Wire” is a terrific documentary about a French guy who walked on a tightrope between the Twin Towers back in 1974. The film plays out like a bank-heist movie, very exciting and entertaining.

And I caught up with the unscreened “Mirrors” last weekend and declared it meh.

Finally, “The Longshots” opens today without being screened (at least not in this region), which makes it one of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets®. It’s a family-friendly drama about an 11-year-old girl who wants to play Pop Warner football. Somehow, it managed to be directed by Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, and to star Ice Cube.

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It used to be that August was almost entirely a dumping ground for lame movies, but “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” bucked that trend in 2005 and things have been looking up ever since, especially for comedies.

“Tropic Thunder” opened on Wednesday, and it’s a sharp, hilarious, vulgar Hollywood satire worthy of most of the attention it’s been getting. Ben Stiller has been in a few stinkers, but he redeems himself with this one. And so does Tom Cruise! All is forgiven, Tom. Just keep doing things like this.

And hey, did you know there was a “Star Wars” movie opening this week? Remember when that used to be a really big deal? Yeah, not anymore. It’s called “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” and it’s a cartoon, and it’s frozen poo on a stick. My review is at Film.com.

And hey, did you know there’s another cartoon opening today? It’s called “Fly Me to the Moon,” and it’s a terrible 3D adventure about three houseflies who stow away on Apollo 11 for the 1969 moon landing. Kids, when you make your animated films, keep this in mind: You need to have a story and some interesting characters. You can’t just draw a bunch of pictures of insects buzzing around and then record some actors saying stupid things to go along with them.

“Henry Pool Is Here” is a not-very-good inspirational drama about a depressed man (Luke Wilson) whose stucco wall might be the site of a holy miracle. Or it might just be a water stain that kind of looks like Jesus. You be the judge!

Woody Allen’s latest, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” is a very good movie despite its unwieldy title (which nine out of 10 blogs have been misspelling “Christina” anyway), and despite the distracting rumors you may have heard about a three-way sex scene involving Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Scarlett Johansson. The movie is sexy, but it’s not explicit. It’s still PG-13. Penelope Cruz didn’t even shave her mustache for the role.

Finally, in limited release, there’s the documentary “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” (which is good), and the Tarantino-produced biker-flick homage “Hell Ride” (which is bad). My review of the latter is at Cinematical, from way back at Sundance — seven months old, but still fresh!

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For some reason everybody decided to release their movies on Wednesday this week instead of Friday, just for funsies! Which suits me fine, because now I can pretend it’s the weekend and just lie around until Monday.

“Pineapple Express” is the latest stoner comedy from the Judd Apatow Laff Factory, and it’s pretty funny, albeit slightly off from the usual gold standard. Seth Rogen and James Franco are a hilarious pair of potheads, that’s for sure. And so are the characters they play.

Appealing to a slightly different demographic is “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2″ (reviewed at Film.com), which addresses all the nagging questions you had at the end of the first one.

In limited release, there’s a thing called “Bottle Shock.” It’s kind of mediocre.

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I’d like to see “The Dark Knight” stay at the top of the box office this weekend, but there’s a chance it will be unseated by “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.” Which is a shame, since “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” is terrible.

Not terrible (but not particularly good, either) is “Swing Vote,” starring Kevin Costner as a man who gets to single-handedly decide the presidential election. My review is at Film.com.

A horror flick called “The Midnight Meat Train” is being dumped … er, released … on about 100 screens today, with no press screenings or publicity. Oh, and most of those theaters are second-run houses (”dollar theaters,” they’re often called, somewhat anachronistically). Lionsgate is obviously fulfilling a contractual obligation to put the film in theaters without actually expending any effort in doing so. I haven’t seen the movie, but surely it’s no worse than many of the films that Lionsgate DOES pay attention to. I’m just sayin’.

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This is a lull week in the summer blockbuster schedule. Only a couple of wide releases that no one’s all that excited about anyway have been tossed out as sacrificial lambs against “The Dark Knight,” which has made so much money that you could stack the cash into a pyramid and set it on fire with a Chinese man tied to a chair on top of it. Hypothetically speaking, I mean.

Today we have “Step Brothers,” which is a sub-par Will Ferrell effort that, predictably, made me laugh anyway. And then we also have “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” (reviewed at Film.com), which is approximately as good as an average “X-Files” TV episode. Meh.

In limited release, though, is “American Teen,” a fantastically entertaining documentary that I saw at Sundance. It will be expanding in the coming weeks, so watch for it. It’s wonderful.

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Holy posthumous Oscar, Batman! Get a load of Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” a groundbreaking and all-around excellent superhero flick that happens to feature one of the most fascinating, most unnerving villain performances ever. I use this term facetiously now and then, but I mean it when I say that this Joker is good old-fashioned nightmare fuel.

For that reason and others — the film’s length, its overall darkness, the gruesome and awful things that happen to people in it — I want to emphasize that it is NOT a movie for children. Teenagers, sure. But young kids? No way. Take that PG-13 rating seriously for once.

Also opening wide today is “Mamma Mia!,” a terrible musical! with a stupid plot! draped around some great ABBA songs! The continued success of the stage version mystifies me, although I suspect it’s a lot more energetic and fun in person than it is on film.

“Space Chimps” (reviewed at Film.com) is a pretty good animated comedy for the kiddies and their parents. It’s gonna make about $3 at the box office this weekend, but if you’ve already taken the tykes to see “WALL-E” and “Kung Fu Panda,” this is a good Plan C.

Finally, in limited release is a comedy called “Kabluey” that’s well worth checking out. It was the opening-night film at the Oxford (Mississippi) Film Festival that I attended back in February (my account of the weekend is here), and I’m delighted that it’s getting some kind of theatrical release, albeit not a very big one. You can visit the film’s website to keep an eye on when/if it’s coming to a theater near you.

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