“My Blueberry Nights” – with added raspberries

A tad disappointing this one.

It’s clear from the off that there’s something very wrong with Jude Law. His heart just didn’t seem to be in it. Maybe he found out that Wong Kar-wai hadn’t been able to land Clive Owen for the part, or maybe he just didn’t fancy (or even like) his leading lady. There was no chemistry between Jude Law (Jeremy) and Norah Jones (Elizabeth), which was a shame, as a spark between the two was an essential premise of the movie. Instead, Jude seemed to be dreading the inevitable clinch. Or perhaps his awkwardness resulted from his interaction with the director – “My Blueberry Nights” is the first film Wong Kar-wai has made in English.

Norah Jones appeared to deal successfully with the part of Elizabeth, as the role was apparently written as that of an ingenue drifting around America like a member of the public who’d wandered onto a film set. Elizabeth looks on helplessly while the characters she meets live (and die) like they are actually in a film. But it is the two subplots – Arnie (David Strathairn) and Sue Lynn’s (Rachel Weisz) marital problems and Leslie’s (Natalie Portman) gambling non-problem (though the least said about her family problem the better) – that make the film worthwhile. How the minimal interaction with the larger than life characters she meets is supposed to have transformed Elizabeth is anyone’s guess, so my recommendation is to treat the film as a couple of tasty sides, and ignore the main dish.

Stylistically, the dark Memphis scenes (with appropriately stormy sound effects) contrast effectively with the bright daylight of the road-trip and the saturated digital colours in the New York cafe. The director must be trying to show us Elizabeth’s changing mood, but unfortunately this loses all its impact if you’re not convinced by the main story. There’s also some CCTV surveillance business in the cafe that seems to be from another movie. Probably the movie left on the cutting-room floor.

Rating: **

I’ll be kind to “Be Kind, Rewind”

My intention is to put a short review of films I watch up here, for my reference as much as anything else… I recently ordered “Where the Truth Lies” (2005) on DVD from Sofa Cinema only to realise in the first scene that I’d seen it already and it wasn’t so good I’d want to see it again. But perhaps my mistake was understandable, as Sofa Cinema’s description is:

“Acclaimed director Atom Egoyan adapts Rupert Holmes’s novel about a celebrity journalist who attempts to reveal some old Hollywood skeletons.” Full stop.

The trouble is, all I remembered was that it was about: “… a long-buried incident that affected the lives and careers of showbiz team Vince Collins and Lanny Morris” (thanks, IMDB), which of course, is what the “celebrity journalist… attempts to reveal”. Mind like a sieve, don’t go in for film quizzes! Though, of course, it’s the relationship between the showbiz duo that makes “Where the Truth Lies” worth watching. Wish I could remember where I saw it – I’m beginning to suspect the London Film Festival and that Atom Egoyan answered questions afterwards.

Anyway, “Be Kind, Rewind” is surprisingly OK, given the Guardian review I read after deciding to go and see it (but now I see the Guardian has likely knocked a star off for some perceived political incorrectness). It’s a bit chaotic and quirky, but actually has a plot, which was a big surprise after “The Science of Sleep“, which I just didn’t get.

The movie credits refer to a website something like bekindrewind-swededmovies, but Google didn’t help me find it – I got a single hit (there’s a word for this) of a blog that Google thought would “harm my computer”. Nasty. Does the site exist? If not, why is it in the movie credits? Will it appear? In the meantime, this Youtube page is worth a look.

Rating: *** (I know, same as the Guardian, but I’m gonna be harsh)