I haven’t seen too many new films lately, but here’s a quick rundown on a few…

• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: if you’ve never read the books or seen the BBC series, not a bad film.  If you are hoping that it will represent the genius of the book (or even the BBC series) forget it.  Yet another terrible adaptation to the screen.  But in it’s own right I thought it had its moments.  My biggest complaint was that they lost much of the great linguistic jokes Adams was so good at and replaced it with slapstick pie-in-the-face antics.  Still amusing, but no where near as satisfying.
• Merchant of Venice: totally fell asleep.  The parts I did see seemed to be a bit over acted.  I’ll have to try to watch the whole thing and see what I think.
• Elektra: in short, it blew.  Very disappointing.  I’m a big fan of Alias, so I was hoping for more.  The story line was so disjoint that it was hard to follow, but intrusive enough to spoil the martial bits.  Yuck!
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: one of the better ones I’ve seen of late.  My kids really liked it too.  Funny both intellectually and in typical over-the-top Jim Carry style.  He was fantastic, as were many of the character parts.  The children also did very well.  They did a great job of maintaining the ambiance.  Easily accessible for children, but plenty there for the grown-ups.
• Angel (Season 3): I started re-watching Season 3, and I think this is the one where they were really firing on all cylinders.  The lost their way a bit in Season 4, but 3 was great.  All the characters had settled into their parts, the story arc was good, and hadn’t gotten too wacky.  Introduces some great bit characters, like Skip the Demon, who commutes to his job in Hell.  Good stuff.

I’d like to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith, as it seems to be getting some good reviews.  Maybe this weekend…