August Rush

The film is about a young musical prodigy, Evan Taylor, aka August Rush (Freddie Highmore) who uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents: an Irish guitar player who performs in a band called Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and a brilliant cellist called Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell). They both met one night and fell in love imideatly, but soon they were torn apart. The kid ends up performing in the streets with a mysterious stranger who calls himself "Wizard" (Robin Williams).

What I loved the most about this film were the fairy tale elements that makes it suitable for children, even though they might not understand the very core of the story. It is incredibly moving - to tears - and tells a lovely story with excellent performances and images. It is visually beautiful, impecably edited, both sounds and images. You can really see (and hear) through the characters' perspective, which makes it even more emotional. It is amazingly casted, every actor plays its character beautifully, but, for me, Freddie Highmore was the biggest breakthrough, even though we had already seen him in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Finding Neverland, in this film, you really take notice of him. Rhys Meyers's performance it's outstanding, mostly because we had never seen him in a sweet, loving character like Louis Connelly. Same with Robin Williams, who's known for characters more lovable and here we see a darker performance (still he manages to be loved by the spectators). Keri Russell is adorable and has such good chemistry with Rhys Meyers. Bottomline, this is trully a symphony of a film. You'll enjoy it, your children will enjoy it, and you will walk out of the theater knowing that, for once, your ticket money was well spent.

American Gangster

The film is about a drug dealer named Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) who comes from a poor family but he becomes extremely wealthy selling pure heroine he buys from South East Asia. His product becomes very famous and the best in the whole Manhattan, he also finds a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. Along comes this honest policeman named Richie Roberts (Russel Crowe), who's famous for finding a million dollars and returning them, and starts searching for big drug dealers. To achieve that he heads up a joint narcotics task force with the Federal government.
With good performances in general, Crowe really stands out and remembers us why we loved him. The film surpriced me because it showed the huuuuge mafia that's underneath the drug bussiness, it has nice switches in the end but I really guessed most of them, nevertheless I found it quite surpricing and catchy. What I didn't like was the violence. There were too many up close shoots of deaths and shootings that were quite disturbing, and other scenes of physical violence that I found uncomfortable. Overall, I enjoyed the film and I managed to digest those violent scenes because of the quality of the entire film. Which I found more suprising was the fact that it was based in a true story! That really wowed me, the film really manages to send a message and inform the young spectators like me. It speaks up.