Angels, baby

Pop culture mongers may care more about what the Pope thinks about the latest Dan Brown-adapted religious thriller than what he thinks about a lot of other things, but fans of Brown’s Vatican-denounced The Da Vinci Code have said for years that this sequel, Angels & Demons, is the better of the two books anyway, and certainly higher rated than Tom Hanks’ swooped back hair in either picture. Regardless, Hanks returns as Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist brought in to investigate the serial murders of Catholic Cardinals by an assassin who may or may not be a member of the Illuminati, a secret society long thought extinct. Langdon must find the killer and uncover the truth about this underground plot. Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard co-star. Rated PG-13.