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August Rush poster

Movies that feel likeAugust Rush (2007)

Evan, a musically gifted orphan, runs away from his orphanage and searches New York City for his birth parents. On his journey, he's taken under the wing of the Wizard, a homeless man who lives in an abandoned theater. After discovering his talent, the Wizard gives Evan the name "August Rush" and devises a plan to profit from his talent. Little does Evan know that his parents, Lyla and Louis, are searching for him too.

If you loved August Rush, the closest films we have are Walk the Line (2005), Still Walking (2008) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). All three share August Rush's contemplative and melancholy feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008).

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If August Rush hit the spot, these will too

Walk the Line poster
Walk the Line
2005 · dir. James Mangold
🍅 83%★ 7.8drama · music · romanceMax

Common ground in both: guitar and grief

The difference: Critics rated this one higher still

A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

Still Walking poster
Still Walking
2008 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 100%★ 7.9drama · family

Warm where it counts, cozy underneath

The difference: Trades the style of August Rush for an angle of its own

A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.

Inside Llewyn Davis poster
Inside Llewyn Davis
2013 · dir. Ethan Coen
🍅 92%★ 7.4drama · musicRent or buy

The same city underneath both: New York City

The difference: Easier on the warmth than August Rush

In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future.

Moulin Rouge! poster
Moulin Rouge!
2001 · dir. Baz Luhrmann
🍅 75%★ 7.5drama · romance · music

Both land stillness and style at once

The difference: Sits closer to romance than August Rush does

A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil poster
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
2008 · dir. Sacha Gervasi
🍅 98%★ 7.9documentary · musicPrime Video

Music with a pulse of warmth, in both cases

At 14, best friends Robb Reiner and Lips made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, hailed as the "demi-gods of Canadian metal" influenced a musical generation that includes Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. Following a calamitous European tour, Lips and Robb, now in their fifties, set off to record their 13th album in one last attempt to fulfill their boyhood dreams.

Once poster
Once
2007 · dir. John Carney
🍅 97%★ 7.8drama · music · romance

One thread runs through both: composer

A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.

Fly Away Home poster
Fly Away Home
1996 · dir. Carroll Ballard
🍅 87%★ 6.9adventure · drama · family

Both keep coming back to the same thing: grief

Amy is only 13 years old when her mother is killed. She goes to Canada to live with her father, an eccentric inventor whom she barely knows. Amy is miserable in her new life... until she discovers a nest of goose eggs that were abandoned when a local forest was torn down. The eggs hatch and Amy becomes "Mama Goose". When winter comes, Amy and her dad must find a way to lead the birds South.

Leto poster
Leto
2018 · dir. Kirill Serebrennikov
🍅 78%★ 7.3music · drama

Romantic drama, and it commits to that

Leningrad, one summer in the early eighties. Smuggling LPs by Lou Reed and David Bowie, the underground rock scene is boiling ahead of the Perestroika. Mike and his beautiful wife Natasha meet with young Viktor Tsoi. Together with friends, they will change the destiny of rock’n’roll in the Soviet Union.

Beyond the Universe poster
Beyond the Universe
2022 · dir. Diego Freitas
★ 6.6romance · drama · musicNetflix

Family built on melancholy, twice over

While waiting for a kidney transplant, a young pianist finds an unexpected connection with her doctor — and the courage to fulfill her musical dreams.

The Sound of Music poster
The Sound of Music
1965 · dir. Robert Wise
🍅 83%★ 8.1drama · family · musicDisney+

Both lean on comfort more than on family

The difference: 42 years apart, and the 1960s show

In the years before World War II, a tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey is hired as a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children and brings a new love of life and music into the home.

tick, tick... BOOM! poster
tick, tick... BOOM!
2021 · dir. Lin-Manuel Miranda
🍅 87%★ 7.5drama · musicNetflix

The same preoccupation in both: composer

On the brink of turning 30, a promising theater composer navigates love, friendship and the pressure to create something great before time runs out.

The Legend of 1900 poster
The Legend of 1900
1998 · dir. Giuseppe Tornatore
🍅 58%★ 8drama · music

Common ground: child prodigy

Musician Max Tooney goes to sell his prized Conn trumpet to a music shop, where he plays the instrument one last time. The shopkeeper recognises the song as one on a record matrix he found and asks who the piece is by. Tooney tells the story of an infant found abandoned in the first class dining room of the four-stacker ocean-liner SS Virginian on 1 January 1900. Danny Boodman, a coal-man from the boiler room, names the boy Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900, after himself, the fruit crate the boy was found in, and the year, and raises him as his own.

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The best-reviewed films that share August Rush’s defining feeling.