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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

64
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59
We Are Wizards
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What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Frost/Nixon
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Hunger
67
Black Balloon, The
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Rent
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving drugs and sexuality, and for some strong language
Starring
Rosario Dawson,
Taye Diggs,
Wilson Jermaine Heredia,
Jesse L. Martin,
Idina Menzel,
Adam Pascal,
Anthony Rapp,
and
Tracie Thoms
Based on Puccini's classic opera La Boheme, Jonathan Larson's revolutionary rock opera Rent tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent in the gritty background of New York's East Village. "Measuring their loves in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic. (Sony)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Musical
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Steve Chbosky
Jonathan Larson (musical book music and lyrics)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Chris Columbus
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 21, 2006
Theatrical: November 23, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
135 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
One of the best film musicals in years -- exuberant, sexy and life affirming in equal measure.

91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Columbus is a member of the '80s generation and he gives the play authenticity, the respect of a classic, an epic visual scope and a sensibility that's blissfully free of any generational self-pity. It seems to be the movie he was born to make, and he serves it well.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie is literally a series of showstoppers, unified by the impulse to turn life, at its scruffiest, into theater - into a rhapsody of the everyday.

80
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
But aside from a few overblown production numbers, Columbus respects the show's smaller scale, and the property itself is a knockout, with great tunes and engaging portraits of East Village bohemians in the AIDS-ravaged late 80s.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Columbus' schizoid approach works more often than not.

75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Rent isn't nearly as transporting a film as the Oscar-winning adaptation of "Chicago," but its energies and passions compensate for a lot of its deficiencies.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
If you fell in love with the big-hearted sentimentality of Rent when you saw it onstage, the film version will remind you why. If you think Jonathan Larson's musical is ponderous agitprop, the movie won't change your view.

75
Miami Herald
Christine Dolen
Now a vastly larger audience has the chance to experience the masterwork of a prodigiously talented man who died far too young.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
It's a pretty good version of a pretty great stage phenomenon.

70
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Often dramatically jumbled and musically muddled - but every time the film seemed ready to tip into awfulness, the sneer on my lips was trumped by the lump in my throat.

67
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Now that it is at last on screen, my reaction is ... what's all the fuss?

63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Rent, for all its good intentions and sensitivity, is easy to forget but easy to forgive. The music and direction feel generic but the cast deserves credit for squeezing every possible drop of emotion out of the material.

63
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
As a conventional drama, Rent would be a pretty corny soap opera. As filmed theater, it's only slightly more conÂvincing. The saving graces - and there are many - are Larson's original songs and the comfortable fit of its ensemble cast.

63
TV Guide
Angel Cohn
While most of the show's scenes work well cinematically, some are laughably miscalculated. Rock-video aesthetics and overamplification swamp "Glory" and "What You Own" while also robbing other sequences of their depth.

63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Chris Columbus' relatively faithful and intermittently affecting adaptation boasts the boisterous vitality of its performers, particularly Jesse L. Martin and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as lovers Tom and Angel.

63
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
On film, Rent is the sound of one hand clapping.

63
Premiere
Peter Debruge
Considering how much new additions Rosario Dawson (as Mimi) and Tracie Thoms (as Joanne) bring to the film, it's a shame Columbus didn't introduce more changes.

60
Variety
David Rooney
Director Chris Columbus has pasted the grungy "La Boheme" update onto film with slavish respect for the original material but a shortage of stylistic imagination and raw emotions.

50
Village Voice
Jorge Morales
Instead of bringing a universal love story to the living present, the film traps it in a frozen past like a prehistoric bug in amber, as removed from moviegoers' experience as a dusty diorama at the American Museum of Natural History.

50
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
Yes, Rent is the movie about AIDS, heroin addiction, homosexuality, strippers, marijuana, cross-dressing, and bisexuality audiences can take their grandparents to go see safe in the knowledge that any lingering trace of danger or authenticity has been carefully removed by director/co-writer Chris Columbus.

50
USA Today
Mike Clark
With heavy HIV subtext and a couple of actors who have scored in other films, this La Bohème spinoff about fatal illness, drug addiction and eviction ought to be less of a slog than it is.

50
Washington Post
Nelson Pressley
Onstage, Rent is a series of power surges, but in the movie the songs leave you flat.

50
New York Post
Kyle Smith
The screen version's Drama Club dorkiness is going to ruin the Rent brand of alleged downtown cool for everyone. If anything can re-shevel the disheveled multitudes of Alphabet City and chase the hipsters into pleated khakis and sweater sets, it's this film.

50
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
It's pedestrian.

50
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
I wasn't sure a movie musical could be worse than last year's styrofoam-and-gilt swan-boat travesty "Phantom of the Opera," but I'm afraid Rent proves me wrong.

50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Mediocre and recommended only to those who can claim a familiarity with the play.

50
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Despite the grating, workmanlike direction of Chris Columbus (he's no Robert Wise, and Rent is nobody's idea of "West Side Story"), this boisterous adaptation is both a vivacious, wiseacre musical and an inarguable morality lesson: Love is all you need. Oh, and rent, of course.

50
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
If the great movie musicals are the ones that transport us to some heady superreality, the only place Rent takes us to is the Nederlander Theatre.

42
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
In the movie, the unconverted will hold their ears as the banal tunes blare out in multichannel sound. And they'll wince as the camera closes in on every heart-tugging moment.

40
Slate
David Edelstein
I found it tiresomely undramatic, even saccharine. Not to mention monotonous.

40
Empire
Angie Errigo
Cards on the table: rock operas pretty much suck except for "Tommy."

30
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Heart-breakingly awful -- slow, lugubrious, and misconceived to the point of baffling amateurism.
30
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
Rent is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads.

30
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
Rent plays as a very long joke with no punch line, an exercise in mawkish sentimentality that's embarrassing to watch. Kudos to the actors for truly committing to their roles, but with this material, it might have been better if they hadn't.

20
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
To paraphrase the play's most famous song: how do you measure the lien against your soul when you're forced to sit through something as forcibly maudlin as Rent? I dunno, but 525,600 minutes is about how long this movie felt at times.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 162 User Votes
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