Reviews of My Blueberry Nights

My Blueberry Nights review

Posted : 3 months, 1 week ago on 24 August 2008 01:07 (A review of My Blueberry Nights)

Wong Kar Wai is one of my favourite film makers, Top 5, one of the best of all time. This is his first English language movie, the rest have been in Chinese and almost exclusively set in Hong Kong. So this movie is quite the change, it's not only in English, it's set in America, mostly in New York. It's a rare film maker who can translate his sensibilities into not only a different language but a completely different culture as well. WKW manages this transition almost perfectly, despite a couple of missteps.

The themes of the movie are familiar, not just to viewers of his previous movies. It's all about love, loss and yearning. Jude Law plays a cafe owner in New York, Jeremy, who encounters Norah Jones' character, Elizabeth, the night she breaks up with her boyfriend. Their romance doesn't exactly bloom, it's a slow burn, one with a complex flavour and after-taste. I'm using food metaphors here, the movie takes it's title from Blueberry pie after all. There's great chemistry between the leads. Norah Jones is competent for the most part and Jude Law is very good. He's the heart of the movie, despite most of it being centered around the character of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth takes off to explore a world different from her current one, without letting Jeremy know. She keeps in touch by sending him a stream of postcards. The two sub-plots are set in Memphis and Las Vegas/Nevada. The Memphis story is weak and Rachel Weisz is terribly miscast. I almost lost hope for the movie there. The Vegas/Nevada story is set around a gambler, played by Natalie Portman, who has a tortured relationship with her dying father. Natalie Portman is completely convincing, even if Norah Jones is on slightly shaky ground in some scenes. After we're done with Elizabeth's journey, the story returns back to New York for it's conclusion.

The trouble with this movie (apart from the clunker in Memphis) is that everything feels like it's been covered in a WKW movie before, most significantly in 'Chungking Express'. It's not one of his masterworks that I've become used to expecting from him. Still, it's a satisfying movie and nobody, and I mean nobody, can do romance better than WKW, even if it's a little re-cycled.

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Not that pointless

Posted : 8 months, 3 weeks ago on 10 March 2008 03:28 (A review of My Blueberry Nights)

Now, the only reason I watched this movie in the first place was because of Norah Jones. With that said, let's talk about the movie. This is a slow movie. It took me about half the movie to understand the point of it all, I guess I was a bit distracted by the seemingly pointlessness of the events. I understand how she felt she had to get away before she could move on. The first story with the drunk cop was pretty good and I liked it. The second story with Natalie Portman waa less believable. Didn't like Natalie's character, or Norah's characters naive ways aroudn her. All in all, the movie started with a one sided kiss and ended with a mutual kiss, and some stuff happend in between. A cute little story without much action or any sidestory.

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Very nice and quiet movie

Posted : 10 months ago on 5 February 2008 04:30 (A review of My Blueberry Nights)

First of all: only watch this movie if you are into these quiet movies like Lost in Translation.

Beside of that, I pretty much enjoyed the movie. The performances of Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn are short but realy intense, the rest of the cast wasn't bad either, a great debut of Norah Jones as an actress.

I've just seen the trailer of the movie and I think it sugests a totaly different movie. The trailer only shows the background story, most of the time we follow Norah Jones's journey through the country meeting some interesting characters.

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