(500) Days of Summer

The biggest star in this movie is neither Joseph Gordon-Levitt nor Zooey Deschanel--it's honesty, perhaps to a fault. So much of what's in here rings true, regarding romantic relationships (as far as I would know), that this flick sticks out like a sore thumb in the rom-com landscape. You can make minor quibbles about certain aspects of the story--people that young generally don't like music that old; one suspects the source material could have been updated--but this story, including its denouement, feels right; this really is how it goes in the world. Given cinema's habit of selling the fantasy, the vision presented here actually comes across as refreshing.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Weird. All the jokes are there, almost word for word, yet everything is strangely flat and not nearly as funny as it was on the page. The story starts out faithful, but veers off in some weird directions before coming to an ending which is profoundly false vis-a-vis the books. At least they got the visuals right, and some of the spirit remains. Not worth paying to see, but a forgivable effort. Let your taste for comedic sci-fi be your guide.

Mumford

Nice, quirky little story of a small-town psychologist who isn't exactly what he seems to be. Amusing and momentarily poignant. And it makes a pretty good case that psychotherapy isn't all it's cracked up to be, either.