August Rush
A film review by Anne Gilbert - Copyright © 2007 Filmcritic.com
Going in to August Rush, you've got to be more than willing to accept fairy tale magic; you've got to be looking to embrace it, with all of its whimsy and overzealous sense of wonder. That way, the movie can be sweet (if a bit ponderously so) as opposed to so precious you feel the need to punt it through a window. It's a fine line, and August Rush is balancing it the whole way through.
Freddie Highmore plays the title character, a little boy in a Dickensian version of the real world: He has grown up in a group home for boys in upstate New York (do they even have those anymore?), where he hears music in the world, from the corn fields to the moonlight. He sets out one day, believing that if he follows the music, it will lead to his parents; where it actually leads is New York City, where the noise of the city turns into the rhythmic beginnings of a Stomp number. There, he hooks up with a band of street urchins/musicians straight out of Oliver Twist, run by the unstable and off-putting Wizard (Robin Williams as a creepy redhead). When August discovers things like guitars and sheet music that allow him to produce the music he hears, he becomes a prodigy, and a sensation.
And of course, because August Rush is all about the magic of fate and coincidence, this little boy's love of music comes from some sort of machinations of the gods: His mother Lyla (Keri Russell) is a star concert cellist; his father Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the guitarist and singer of a rock band. The two meet by coincidence on a rooftop and share one perfect night of moonlight and music, and are separated after. As August is looking for them, they are looking for one another and him. It's a small world, really, that separates August from his parents, but despite the number of coincidences and close calls that have parents and child nearly meeting, it takes them a very, very long time to actually get there.
If you find a story so heavy on the charm appealing, though, then August Rush delivers. Highmore is a spectacularly endearing little boy, and he plays the wise-beyond-his-years waif to perfection. Besides that, the film is cast almost entirely with likable and recognizable stars; in addition to Russell, Meyers, and Williams, Terrence Howard plays a sympathetic employee of child protective services, and even the tiny supporting parts are filled by actors from TV shows like Ugly Betty and Moonlight. If nothing else, August Rush is pleasant, so long as you don't go looking for realism or practicality.
Director Kirsten Sheridan is too fond of close-up camera shots and long, silent takes to make a movie that moves at a rapid clip, however. And while it is impressive that all three stars are actually performing some of their onscreen music, for a movie that is all about a dazzling musical prodigy, the actual music is good, but not astounding. While it is totally in character for a fairy tale to feature people who feel an instant and inexplicable connection to one another, August Rush relies on the device more than is strictly necessary, and unfortunately is content to have it stand in for actual character development.
The movie is every bit as super sweet and precious as it sounds; it's also rather slow, and prone to long sequences of nothing but light playing off shiny objects and cacophonies of rhythmic sound. It also places its entire plot on the belief that a mother can instantly recognize a son she's never seen, that fate wields an actively guiding hand, and that music can transcend all other forms of communication in ways that we inherently understand, if we merely listen. Even if it sounds like so much touchy-feely nonsense, August Rush manages it with just enough sincerity and embracing of magic that it manages to stay just this side of saccharine, most of the time.
A film review by Anne Gilbert - Copyright © 2007 Filmcritic.com
Going in to August Rush, you've got to be more than willing to accept fairy tale magic; you've got to be looking to embrace it, with all of its whimsy and overzealous sense of wonder. That way, the movie can be sweet (if a bit ponderously so) as opposed to so precious you feel the need to punt it through a window. It's a fine line, and August Rush is balancing it the whole way through.
Freddie Highmore plays the title character, a little boy in a Dickensian version of the real world: He has grown up in a group home for boys in upstate New York (do they even have those anymore?), where he hears music in the world, from the corn fields to the moonlight. He sets out one day, believing that if he follows the music, it will lead to his parents; where it actually leads is New York City, where the noise of the city turns into the rhythmic beginnings of a Stomp number. There, he hooks up with a band of street urchins/musicians straight out of Oliver Twist, run by the unstable and off-putting Wizard (Robin Williams as a creepy redhead). When August discovers things like guitars and sheet music that allow him to produce the music he hears, he becomes a prodigy, and a sensation.
And of course, because August Rush is all about the magic of fate and coincidence, this little boy's love of music comes from some sort of machinations of the gods: His mother Lyla (Keri Russell) is a star concert cellist; his father Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the guitarist and singer of a rock band. The two meet by coincidence on a rooftop and share one perfect night of moonlight and music, and are separated after. As August is looking for them, they are looking for one another and him. It's a small world, really, that separates August from his parents, but despite the number of coincidences and close calls that have parents and child nearly meeting, it takes them a very, very long time to actually get there.
If you find a story so heavy on the charm appealing, though, then August Rush delivers. Highmore is a spectacularly endearing little boy, and he plays the wise-beyond-his-years waif to perfection. Besides that, the film is cast almost entirely with likable and recognizable stars; in addition to Russell, Meyers, and Williams, Terrence Howard plays a sympathetic employee of child protective services, and even the tiny supporting parts are filled by actors from TV shows like Ugly Betty and Moonlight. If nothing else, August Rush is pleasant, so long as you don't go looking for realism or practicality.
Director Kirsten Sheridan is too fond of close-up camera shots and long, silent takes to make a movie that moves at a rapid clip, however. And while it is impressive that all three stars are actually performing some of their onscreen music, for a movie that is all about a dazzling musical prodigy, the actual music is good, but not astounding. While it is totally in character for a fairy tale to feature people who feel an instant and inexplicable connection to one another, August Rush relies on the device more than is strictly necessary, and unfortunately is content to have it stand in for actual character development.
The movie is every bit as super sweet and precious as it sounds; it's also rather slow, and prone to long sequences of nothing but light playing off shiny objects and cacophonies of rhythmic sound. It also places its entire plot on the belief that a mother can instantly recognize a son she's never seen, that fate wields an actively guiding hand, and that music can transcend all other forms of communication in ways that we inherently understand, if we merely listen. Even if it sounds like so much touchy-feely nonsense, August Rush manages it with just enough sincerity and embracing of magic that it manages to stay just this side of saccharine, most of the time.
The only good man to be found in Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men is a sheriff by the name of Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). Every morning he has bacon and black coffee with his eggs and he'll take any chance he can to ride horses with his wife in the canyons of the Texas border territory. In a jarring opening monologue, Bell says that to know the kind of evil going on these days would require a man to put "his soul at hazard" and to say "OK, I'll be part of this world." He doesn't find appeal in conceding to either.
Bell's troubles kick off when a deputy makes the fatal mistake of arresting a pale man with a terrible bowl cut, properly named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh strangles the deputy while his flailing boots leave a trail of scuff marks on the jail floor. As he makes his way back to his meeting spot, Llewelyn Moss (a near-stoic Josh Brolin) has come upon a massacre of drug runners in the Texas canyons and prairies. He leaves the drugs but takes a bag full of money for his own. Within hours, he is sending his wife to live with her mother and plotting the best way to shake the trail of dead that is left in his wake. A cocky fixer (Woody Harrelson) makes nothing but a blip on Chigurh's radar as he rifles through hotels and hospitals to find his money and the man who has "inconvenienced" him.
Adapted with a vice-grip from Cormac McCarthy's ferocious novel, No Country is the neo-western byproduct of a deranged and adrift zeitgeist. Bell constitutes a prolonged case of deja vu from when the West was a place where the law was respected though hardly ever obeyed. While Moss might dress and talk like a cowboy, he acts and thinks like a thief on the run: after the money is stolen, he is intermittently wounded or bleeding in some way for the rest of the film. Chigurh must have been spawned from an uncharted ring of hell to do half the things he does: using a cattle gun to dispatch human cattle and pop a few pesky locks, flipping a coin as a victim's last vestige of hope. One character, when questioned, diagnoses Chigurh's disposition as "not having a sense of humor."
The Coens have matured into deft directors of small action in haunted set pieces: a self-administered surgery in a hotel room, the securing and retrieval of the bag of money in a vent, a last-minute inspection of a crime scene. These are all moments of laconic tension that play out and blend into the blood-soaked décor of the film with rustled elegance. Even more, their touch with actors has become a refined skill. Jones has become a monument to "the old ways" in his own right but unlike his character in Paul Haggis' exceptional In the Valley of Elah, his dread and terror over the current state have become terminal here; his bracing yet defeated tone hangs over the film like a cracked bull skull. Bardem miraculously plays Chigurh without deluding his malevolence or turning him into a character. The scariest part of Bardem's groundbreaking performance is that he acts just a notch left of human.
Chigurh's rampage through Texas, shot like a suburb of purgatory by the extraordinary Roger Deakins, and Moss' inability to shake that bag of money become the death knell for the old ways, not to mention Bell's belief that he can do some good. The sheriff wrestles with his sense of discouragement and the feeling of being "outmatched" while sitting over a bad cup of coffee with his Uncle Ellis in one of the film's final scene. What becomes apparent in the Coens' film is echoed at the end of Ellis' hair-raising eulogy for the American conscience: "You can't stop what's coming."
