In his first English-language film, the Hong Kong avant-pop auteur Wong Kar-Wai shoots American dive bars in gorgeous hot reds, and he teases out moments of terrific acting from David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz as a bitter, raging couple, and from Natalie Portman as a Dixie-broad poker fiend with daddy issues. But Norah Jones, making her big-screen debut as a wistful wanderer, is a beautiful blank, and the fragments barely add up to a movie. My Blueberry Nights hints that buried in Wong's spicy odd noodlings may be an even better conventional filmmaker. B-
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