My Blueberry Nights (2008)

Jeremy (Jude Law), from England, has moved to Manhattan and operates a small "pub". His specialties are his wonderful desserts, including blueberry pie. One day, a beautiful young woman, Elizabeth (Norah Jones) walks in to the place, extremely distraught. Her boyfriend has ended their relationship and she is beside herself with grief. It seems her former love comes into the pub and she was hoping to "run into" him. Despite Lizzie coming a few times, she doesn't meet him. Then, too, although Jeremy obviously grows to like her, its too soon for Elizabeth to even think about moving on. So, Lizzie sets off for Memphis and sends postcards to Jeremy from time to time. In Tennessee, the young lady works as a waitress during the day and in a bar at night. Amazingly, the same man frequents both places. That would be a police officer (David Straithairn) who eats in the morning and gets totally drunk at night. An alcoholic who has tried to quit, he is now in deep because his gorgeous young wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) has left him. Lizzie tries to comfort him but he remains melancholy. Will his broken heart ever mend? After living in the South, Elizabeth goes west to Nevada where she meets Leslie (Natalie Portman) who wants to sell the waitress her dad's car, Lizzie's fondest wish. All the while, Elizabeth continues to write to Jeremy. Is a new affection brewing? This is a stunning film, with a sensational story, script and direction. In addition, the photography and editing are awe-inspiring, very creative and unusual. On top of this, the cast is likewise wonderful, with Law, Jones, Straithairn, Weisz, Portman, and all of the others exhibiting fine, fine performances. So, despite a cover that looks like a typical romantic drama, this film is much more. Thus, this viewer says, make your night a Blueberry Night soon.

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.

I read a review about the movie which said it's all about mood. If you don't have a certain mood, you don't like the movie. I totally agree. This is not regular entertainment. It too boring for that. It's a bedside movie. Something that you like only if you're in proper position and you don't have to worry about anything. It's a perfect picture for a movie night cause mainly all the action is on nights and in the end you probably feel it's time to go sleep.The cast is awesome. As a big fan of beautiful women, there are many in it. At the head of course my favorite, Natalie Portman. She's amazing here as always. But it's singer Norah Jones who's got the leading role. She's doing fine. Rachel Weisz is another beauty who has a small part to play.There are two things that may happen to you watching this movie. One was that you want to go sleep. The other which happened to me was that you feel hungry. Well it's of course if you haven't eaten just before watching the film. There are some yummy-yummy blueberry pies on-screen which may put your fauces to work. You've been warned!

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.