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The rest of the month's offerings were more of the hit and miss variety. Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman turned up for The Interpreter, a surprisingly virile thriller that had legs good enough to finish at $71 million. Matthew McConaughey teamed with Penelope Cruz for book adaptation Sahara; I'd say that the $68 million it took in was pretty good - but for whatever reason, this one cost $160 million! So never mind. Next, Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore had a modest hit with the very funny Fever Pitch ($42 million total), but Fallon hasn't followed it up with another leading role yet. Perhaps to counter his hit Guess Who, Ashton Kutcher's A Lot Like Love finished with only $21 million. And finally, Chinese martial arts-fest Kung Fu Hustle dragged itself to $17 million, while a single-digit gross was accorded to long-forgotten comedy King's Ransom ($4 million).

The month ended with a pair of disappointments. The first, sequel xXx: State of the Union, replaced Vin Diesel with Ice Cube and followed-up the original's $141 million total with an embarassing $26 million (Diesel is now threatening to return for another sequel). The weekend's other film was long-, long-, long-awaited sci-fi adaptation The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a title that received only mixed critical notices and petered out at $51 million. But frankly, anything that gets those "I can't wait for the [insert popular fanboy property] movie to come out" posts off of message boards is okay with me.

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