| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Wildly romantic.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
It's a stylish and sweet film with moments of affecting brilliance that counterbalance its flaws.
|
| 75 |
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Despite its flaws, the film has the same dreamy, romantic melancholy that distinguishes Wong's best films.
|
| 75 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Wong's visions of a New York café, a Memphis bar, and a Vegas casino--not to mention the swaths of beautiful country in the Southwest--have that enveloping quality that make his films so persistently seductive. The natives should feel flattered.
|
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Norah Jones, making her big-screen debut as a wistful wanderer, is a beautiful blank, and the fragments barely add up to a movie.
|
| 63 |
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
All this is frustrating, as the picture contains a few grace notes that remind one what an acute filmmaker Wong can be.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Music and nostalgia are what fuel all this filmmaker's movies, though, even a half-baked translation like this one.
|
| 60 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
The director is chasing a mood here -- a mood, an atmosphere and feelings -- much as he did in "In the Mood for Love."
|
| 50 |
Variety
Todd McCarthy
As much a trifle as its title suggests, My Blueberry Nights sees Hong Kong stylist Wong Kar Wai applying his characteristic visual and thematic doodles to a wispy story of lovelorn Yanks.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
Michelle Orange
The disappointment here doesn't have much to do with Wong doing America--he's been doing America for years, even in Chinese--but with Wong doing Wong, and not up to his own standard.
|
| 50 |
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
My Blueberry Nights may not quite be what fans of either Jones or Wong Kar-wai -- directing his first film in English -- are expecting. It's a late-night, lovelorn mood piece in a minor key, not complicated or convoluted, finally more confection than substance.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Isn’t eye candy; it’s a drool-worthy slice of eye pie.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Often ponderous, sometimes pretentious and mostly clichéd, this contrived meditation on longing and loss feels like a missed opportunity.
|
| 50 |
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
Alternately precious and vapid, the movie attempts to wrest metaphors from a jar of house keys, and eternal verities from pastry. Slice the pie how you will, it's still half-baked.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
The biggest problem is Wong's decision to cast Norah Jones as Elizabeth, a New Yorker who hits the road after a love affair goes bad. Jones, in her first movie, can't act. (There, I said it!)
|
| 50 |
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
After 90 minutes of My Blueberry Nights, which pass pleasantly enough, with swirly, mood-saturated colors; lovely faces; and nice music, you may feel a bit logy yourself -- filled up, sugar-addled, but not really satisfied.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
A stunner of a movie. But all those gorgeous images never add up to a full picture.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai has an undeservedly high reputation as a master stylist. He's more like a master window dresser.
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
The use of recognizable movie stars doesn't help, r serve Wong's style. My Blueberry Nights" should have played like a memory, but its hard-living, luckless losers are too beautiful to be believed.
|
| 50 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
There's a curious mismatch between the surface of the movie and what lies beneath it. Wong's technique is layered and detailed like a couture gown, but the story it hangs on is as generic as a seamstress's dress form.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Even with dyed hair, heavy makeup and a cigarette dangling from her bottom lip, Portman still looks like a schoolgirl pretending to be somebody's mom.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
There are momentary pleasures, to be sure – a corker of a kiss here, an Otis Redding-backed barroom slink there – but frankly, I'm a little weary of Wong wearing "that same old shaggy dress."
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
It's beautiful to look at, but there's little there to savor.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
In these dusty American settings, the wistful melancholy of Wong's earlier movies seems fairly contrived.
|
| 30 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Fractured, tentative, oh-so-artsy and very much in the style of Wong's previous Hong Kong-set boy-meets-girl movies. But this time, the effect is contrived: a star-driven pseudo-indie affair that will please neither celebrity worshipers nor cineastes.
|
