sLnThePerFecT
Minor Spoilers Ahead!I just finished watching this one but i have to say i am a little disappointed. But before that, let me just say i really wanted to enjoy this movie, i honestly did but it just didn't happen. I love blueberry so first time i saw the title and checked out the trailer, i said to myself 'this is going to be my favorite movie!' But here i was, 30 minutes in and trying to find a good thing to hold on to in the move that will get me through the end but all i could gather was Jude Law's character, Jeremy. He was my favorite. His accent was amazingly lovely and his character was so nice and romantic and waiting and just lovely... It even made me forget about how bad Norah Jones's acting was. But didn't see him as much as the viewer would like to and i think that was the biggest let down of the film. Natalie Portman was amazing but her character didn't get a chance to glow because her time was so limited and without a backstory it just felt flat. Rachel Weisz, she was so gorgeous and her character wanted to be alive so much but still so little time and with so little info, even she couldn't help the character to become a 'someone'. The actors and actresses were great (minus Norah Jones but she did her best and it's not her fault that she doesn't have talent in the acting front) but the dialogues were so dead and the camera work was awful. The editing was so of the charts that i think sometimes they just put cut scenes that doesn't even makes sense into the movie just to make it seem like it's full, you know. Anyways, i am not saying that this movie is an 'avoid at all costs' but it's not 'a must see' either. You can open it as a background noise on a mellow night while you are eating take outs. It's that kind of a movie, that's all. 5/10
mrshev
This film has a good few things going for it. A stellar cast, a good director and an interesting premise. It is shot BEAUTIFULLY. The DOP on this knocked it out of the park, it just looks sumptuous. The lighting is magnificent and every scene is composed and framed like an oil painting.But, the problem with this movie is - unfortunately - threefold. Firstly, the script is terrible - a real stinker - and it screams of lack of re-writing and editing. It just has no punch or pizazz at all and goes nowhere...slowly. The second problem is the acting. There is obviously some acting talent on this film. David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman gamely pull a little joy from the script but this is definitely not one for the reel. The rest of the cast are pretty terrible. Jude Law, given a weak script, shows his limitations and his Manc accent goes from Lancashire to Leeds to North London and then back again. His chemistry with Norah Jones is like brother and sister and is a bit: ewww! Norah Jones should stick to singing, Full stop. The rest of the ensemble are TV character actors hamming it up in cameos.The third problem is that a good director can see the limitation in the script and the acting talent and work around it. Wong doesn't do that and some of his directorial decisions are weird. The over use of stepped frames, terrible editing (you notice the edits) and misuse of thematic camera angles are just a couple of errors.Ultimately this is a film that is lovely to look at but fails the most important screen test: tell a story that makes you care about the characters. 3 stars for the DOP.
Pierre Radulescu
She comes every night to a small café in SoHo, looking for solace after a break-up. He runs the place and knows how to listen words and silences. Between them a blueberry pie that works wonders. He falls for her, she needs firstly to come to her own terms. So she leaves New York for a journey coast to coast, working as a waitress in different towns and knowing various people with their stories. In a pub in Memphis a long time botched couple, ending miserably. The survivor will have a ghost to carry. In a casino some place in Nevada an embittered gambler, hiding another ghost. Everybody seems to be there either a skeleton or a zombie, with a skeleton in charge.One day she will return to the café in SoHo. Life can also be nice.It's My Blueberry Nights, made by Wong Kar-Wai in 2007. She is Norah Jones, at her first movie role. He is Jude Law. The couple in Memphis is played by David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz. The Nevada gambler is Natalie Portman. It is the first movie Wong Kar-Wai made in America, with an American cast, also the first time he did not collaborate with Chris Doyle. Here the Director of Photography was Darius Khondji, "the lonesome lens man who made Pollack, Allen, Fincher, Boyle, Polanski, and Bertolucci look so fine" (I'm quoting here Richard Sleboe).It's Wong Kar-Way, so first thought goes to Chungking Express: neon colors generously flooding the place, great dreamy shots bathed in music and making the universe look psychedelic (which it probably is, why not?), the small coffee shop where passed loves are cured and new loves look so promising, young sweet heroes whose lives are flooded with sweet crazy details (the café in SoHo carries a Russian name - КЛЮЧ - as a former flame in the life of the young man was a superb Russian, Katya; also КЛЮЧ is the Russian for KEY, which sends to the glass full of keys on the countertop - keys of passed loves waiting to be taken back or thrown away; the postcards sent every day by the young girl from every town on her journey, without giving any clue about her actual address). English spoken with all kind of accents (Mancunian, Muscovite, Tennessean), whirled together. And above all the blueberry pie.Don't forget that the young heroine is a waitress in both My Blueberry Nights and Chungking Express. And don't forget the cop in both movies.So it calls in mind Chungking Express, which is a masterpiece. The problem is that nobody cannot create the same masterpiece twice, not even Wong Kar-Wai. Understandably many reviewers were slightly disappointed, some even very critical.It is true that you find here the same cinematic language as in Chungking Express, only we should observe that a movie is not only about cinematic language.Chungking Express has a formidable sense of immediacy, it's a spontaneous flow: slices of life not ordered by some logic, evolving on their own with no predictability. The two stories in the movie end with no resolution; just a moment in life chosen by random.Here in My Blueberry Night the evolution is predictable. We are following a story with a start and an end and we are waiting the heroine to come back one day to New York and to commence her new love.And the first feeling is that's not Wong Kar-Wai. Said one reviewer, it's Wong Kar-Wai lite.Imho these critics miss an important point: Wong Kar-Wai created not only Chungking Express; In the Mood for Love is another great movie and it is quite different.Actually I would think now at another work of Wong Kar-Wai, the segment he created for the movie Eros: the segment is named The Hand and it's a small gem. It's a poignant description of a tragic destiny, a description flooded with an intoxicating erotic desire, told with a minimalism that's simply exquisite.What seems to me is that there are two roads in the work of Wong Kar-Wai (let's say the one in Chungking Express and the other in In the Mood for Love - or in The Hand) and here in My Blueberry Nights he wants to put them together. If the whole sends us to Chungking Express, the two episodes in Memphis and Nevada send directly to the poignancy of In the Mood for Love and The Hand. Someone observed once that some movies of Almodovar could be viewed as a cathedral and its chapels (well, the observations continued that the cathedral was Kitsch and its chapels Gothic). Here in My Blueberry Nights the romance of the two sympathetic lead characters is the cathedral hosting the two episodes. I would say, the romance is Wong Kar-Wai-lite because it's just a pretext: the Gothic stays in the episodes.Each of the two episodes, in Memphis and Nevada, is amazing: each one has the essentiality of a morality tale. It's the tragedy of the couple: the love has disappeared you don't know when, you hate the other, you hate yourself, you cannot escape. You carry the ghost of the other whatever you try, wherever you go, regardless the other is alive or dead. You are a ghost.And David Strathairn, as well as Rachel Weisz, as well as Natalia Portman, play amazingly.
Manal S.
This movie is as sweet and gentle as a dreamy midnight slow song. It subtly touches the cords of your heart through the self-discovering journey that Elizabeth (Norah Jones) undertakes. Jude Law was an eye-candy as usual, and he'll never cease to strike you with his gentleness and natural flow of emotions throughout the few scenes he is in. David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman have added artistic splendor to the movie with their small yet very touching roles. As for the ever-sweet Norah Jones, please stick to singing! Acting is certainly not for you. She has turned Elizabeth into a bland and emotionless character.
