LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (2004) Stream on Netflix. Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Among adults, children’s book authors are often the most attuned to how kids experience the world. The best of them, like Roald Dahl, remind us that childhood tends to involve a fair amount of confusion and pain. “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” a cycle of books written by Daniel Handler, is particularly sensitive to the ways in which children are vulnerable. Its orphaned protagonists, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire, are left in the care of Count Olaf, a relative who has his sight’s set on their family fortune. This film adaptation of the first three installments of the series follows the Baudelaires as they try to survive Olaf’s murderous machinations. In her review for The Times, Manohla Dargis said that the film “doesn’t have the author’s sense of whimsy (or irony)” but is nonetheless “pleasantly watchable entertainment.”