Bureau of Cinematique Spectacular

Posted by on Nov 28, 2005 in Blog | One Comment

I spent the last five days in glorious San Francisco, romping around the Bay Area with Yelena and my family, visiting the first H&M on the west coast and (of course) seeing a few flicks. For me and Yelena it was a case of quid pro quo: I was desperate to see “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and she was equally pumped to view the film adaptation of “Rent.”

While I am intimately familiar with the former, I have never even seen the musical, nor am I even remotely familiar with the details of the story. I found that A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times nailed this movie exactly – the movie is very loose, and often starts to veer into zany cheesiness, but it never gets off the rails because of the sheer emotional weight of the story. The cast was excellent, although sometimes a bit old. Not exactly a feel-good movie, but not a total waste.

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1 Comment

  1. Thought Criminal
    March 3, 2006

    As someone who’s been rather obsessed with the stage show for quite some time, I felt that the problem with Rent is that you have to be quite familiar with the story to begin with or it feels a tad disconnected. I made people see it who didn’t know the story and they all enjoyed it but said the same thing. That being said, it was a rather good adaption. I was plesantly surprised. One thing that helped, and I don’t know if people would know this if they weren’t familiar with the broadway show, is that with the exception of two characters, the entire original broadway cast was brought to the movie, so you had people who were intimately familiar with the story and characters.