My Blueberry Nights (2008)

Image credit: MaCall Polay

ME AND MS. JONES Norah Jones (left) and Natalie Portman wander through director Wong Kar-Wai's mixed-bag English-language debut, My Blueberry Nights

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-