Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

I had a minor surgery Thursday the 5th and because of it, and an infection to go along with it, I have been unable to do much at all. As such, the past week has been poorly populated with content, something I’m hoping to rectify as I’m feel better each day.

Some things that weren’t movies that I watched including listening to HG Wells’ War of the Worlds on audiobook, a wonderful experience; listening to six episodes of Nick Offerman’s Audible series Bedtime Stories for Cynics, which were unbearably amusing; and starting the first couple of chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on audiobook with Alan Cumming reading (there are supposed to be others, but I didn’t get that far).

Apart from that, here is what I was able to watch this past week:

A Series of Unfortunate Events

I didn’t get out to the movies this weekend, thanks to my post-surgical recovery, but I did manage to binge-watch the entirety of the new A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The first adaptation, starring Jim Carrey was a regular feature film that collapsed the entirety of the first three books into a cramped, disjointed, poorly acted mess of a film that saw Jim Carrey unleashed when he should have been restrained.

Thankfully, the new series, with Neil Patrick Harris in the role of Count Olaf this time out, is a much more spry and exciting endeavor. Turning the first four of the thirteen books of the series into eight episodes, two episodes per book, is precisely the strategy I suggested originally. Each book could easily take the form of a single movie, and at 45-minutes per episode, these end up like mini-movies for each book.

The performances are stellar and the aesthetic is brilliant. Any fan of the book will instantly recognize the events and adventures of the Beaudelaire Orphans along the way. The production values are perfect, as are the various literary punches and dialogue flares that make it feel like you’re living out the stories of the books almost magically. The only bad thing about it is having to wait until Seasons 2, 3, and possibly 4, to finish it all out.