Weekend Movie Forecast: Inglourious Basterds or Passing Strange

As you may recall, we were batshit crazy in love with Passing Strange, the hilarious, exhilarating rock musical about a young man's journey from bourgeois conformity to cosmopolitan discovery. Spike Lee's documentary film version of rock musical Passing Strange attempts to catch that theatrical lighting in a bottle, but having seen the show live three times, we have to admit to being somewhat underwhelmed. It's not Lee's fault; the film is well made, but it's still no substitute for the electricity that crackled through the Belasco Theatre during the production's too-brief run.

A.O. Scott at the Times, on the other hand, didn't exactly love the Broadway production, but the film left him "blown away. Loose ends ceased to dangle; soft spots were smoothed away and slow passages tightened up. Some of this may lie in my own preference for the cognitive solitude of movie-watching over the self-conscious sociability of theatergoing, but Mr. Lee’s contribution, as well as that of the cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, should not be discounted.

"Passing Strange is less a collection of songs — though there are a few, most notably 'Keys (Marianna),' that stand out — than a single headlong piece of music. You might say a rock opera, if that phrase did not summon up spectacles of bloated self-importance entirely antithetical to the spirit of this show. A show not simply preserved by Mr. Lee’s camera, but brought, somehow, to its fullest, strangest, most electrifying realization."