Absolutely Fantastic

A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is not usually the kind of film I would pick up but I was intrigued that it was Wong Kar Wai who directed and that Lawrence Block had a hand in the writing. Not sure if this should be called a romantic comedy, probably not as its not very funny, nor is is particularly romantic. I guess there are romantic notions, deliberations over whether to have the infamous blueberry pie, the rather charming business regarding customer keys left at the diner and other little things made rather a lot of. Main thing, this is really good to look at. As was to be expected this is very colourful with the director making the most of neon and reflections. Not afraid to shoot wondrous close-ups irrelevant to the dialogue. Which brings us to Lawrence Block, whose work I have read rather a lot of. Apart from his hard edged villainous stuff (and even within some of those) he can switch effortlessly to believable, small time dialogue, bit like how Tarantino does rather heavy-handedly. Here the actors seem to have had a hand in it too, so much comes across as improvised and no the worse for that. Its just this doesn't really go anywhere, not really, but it is not an unpleasant way to spend some time.

First of all, I'd like to start by saying that I'm a huge fan of a beautiful, arty movie that doesn't really go anywhere, it's just a statement on time or place or feeling and narrated mainly by it's own soundtrack. Which I think was the intention for this. Unfortunately it fell short and the delivery was pretentious and edited like a car commercial. I'd like to give kudos to the production design, costumes, make up and some of the camera work which provided a lovely backdrop and palate to some very grey acting. Sadly, this just wasn't for me. Poor performances from some usually stellar cast and I felt absolutely nothing for Norah Jones' performance or character. Saddens me to give a bad review as I can usually find something to enjoy out of any film you put in front of me but for the first time, I nearly didn't sit this one out. But Jude Law did look very bewitching in that beanie....

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.

if you are here on IMDb, you will notice that most really bad movies have a high rating, such is the case for this piece of crap.in reality there is less than 1 of 6 movies that rate 4 stars , but here on IMDb it is more like 5 of 6 movies are 4 stars, so you begin to see that the people who tend to write reviews like the movies , my reviews are written from a neutral view, so with that said here we go my review of "my blueberry nights".Norah Jones is singer writer ,lets hope she stays that, i do not know if it was the material she had to work with or the ideal of the director to make a singer a star, but this movie sucks -plain and simple, it appeals mainly to women. the whole ideal of blue berry pie being orgasmic. i have sit thru some really bad female movies(eat-pray -puke)but blueberry nights is the worst, to me personally this is the worst movie of all time, it literally made me sick to my stomach , i wanted to get up and leave,Norah is the main character who leaves her boy friend Jude law , he makes really great blueberry pies , she takes off on a road trip no it is not a funny ,enjoyable road trip but a very dark trip filled with sickos , and very stereo-typed jazz joints as the ones in Memphis,on her journey she goes thru Memphis-neworlens-and Vegas to mention a few she meets a crazy cop,his even crazier wife, and then a crazy gambler played by Natalie portman,i don't know who would bankroll this crap but someone did and in my honest opinion this may be worst movie of all time, it reminds me of being held a captive in a nightmare, the funny thing is it had Jude law and Natalie portman in it, i am a Jude law fan,but i guess this shows anyone can be bought for money .miss Jones you need to stick to singing.and BTW if you are offered blueberry pie turn it down for chocolate cake.