Home
NEW TODAY
FEST DEADLINES
FREE EVENTS
Sept. 25 FILM FEST
Sept. 25 TV Script
WATCH MOVIES
NEW MOVIES
FESTIVAL VIDEOS
PICTURES
READ POETRY
MOVIE SCENES
SUBMIT A SCRIPT
SUBMIT your FILM
POETRY CONTEST
TV CONTEST
1PG. CONTEST
WATCH TV
DAILY PODCASTS
WATCH FREE FILMS
THE LAST RITE
2010 MOVIES
ACTORS
ACTRESSES
DIRECTORS
MOVIES by YEAR
FILM FRANCHISES
MOVIE GENRES
CLASSIC MOVIES
NOTES and IDEAS
WATCH VIRAL
GET OUR E-ZINE!
CONTACT US

Subscribe To This Site
XML RSS
Add to Google
Add to My Yahoo!
Add to My MSN
Subscribe with Bloglines
 

AUGUST RUSH

AUGUST RUSH
Movie Reviews
by Jen Frankel
ALSO ON SITE



August Rush
Directed by Kirsten Sheridan
Starring Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell
Terrence Howard and Robin Williams




SYNOPSIS

Louis and Lyla, one a rock musician and the other a classical cellist, meet and spend one magical New York night falling in love before losing each other. Evan, who has never known his mother and father, hears music in the air that draws him toward the city and to his destiny.

REVIEW

Warning (not quite the same as a spoiler) - "August Rush" is a film just brimming with joy. It's not a film to watch in a cynical frame of mind, but one to enjoy like you just ate up Christmas as a seven-year old.

It's a fairy tale, of New York, of abandonned orphans, of the power of something as ephemeral and abstract as music and as potent as love.

Director Kirsten Sheridan has an odd resume; she got her start as an actor playing Sharon in My Left Foot, and moved freely through the moviemaker ranks as camera operator, editor, writer ("In America"), and director.

She works magic here, thanks especially to a beautiful musical score and a strong cast.

Movies about genius, in particular musical genius, are a tough sell especially if you're a musician yourself. To try to dissect the talent or inspiration of an artist is like trying to describe the color of water: the vessel and the observer changes the result completely.

Somehow, even skating dangerously close to melodrama, this film really does it.

Maybe that's not even an insult. The film's spiritual mother is "Oliver Twist," and I don't think Charles Dickens would flinch at that description.

Freddie Highmore is proving himself more and more with each successive project as a young actor with depth and poise. You may remember him as Charlie in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," already his fifth feature.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Keri Russell (Felicity) are beautifully cast as talented artists in their own rights who lose their love for music as they lose each other.

And Robin Williams gets to strike out in a darker direction in his Fagin-esque role as Wizard, a failed and jaded streetsinger who farms out his orphans to busk New York's corners and parks, taking their "tips" for himself.

The reason it works is that there is a fairytale quality to everything about this film, from the sweeping camera that picks up details of nature, humans, and the man-made world, turning everything into a kind of fantastic landscape as if you're seeing it for the first time.

Meyers is perhaps a little more believable as a musician that Russell, but you can cut her some slack - cello is a very difficult instrument to even PRETEND to play.

Sheridan hands a complexly woven story with deft stroke, and hits every emotional beat.

Watch "August Rush" with open eyes and heart, and see it with someone you love. You'll be in for a treat.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK of this page on www.WILDsound.ca
Re:
First Name
E-mail Address
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK of this page on www.WILDsound.ca
Return from August Rush to home page
Google
 

footer for August Rush page