My Blueberry Nights (2008)

Master of moody romance Wong Kar-Wai--the auteur behind In the Mood for Love--stumbles a bit with his first English-language picture, My Blueberry Nights. The usual components remain: pop music, slo-mo, melancholy harmonica, and scenes bathed in orange, green, blue, and red. But somehow the spell is broken with American actors and the adoption of a more traditional American road trip archetype, co-written by novelist Lawrence Block. Norah Jones, in her screen debut, isn’t much help: her placid face simply doesn't resonate the way her singing voice does. In the orbit of her traveling woman are Jude Law, Natalie Portman, David Straithairn, and Rachel Weisz. All get big drama and slow monologues, but ultimately there's too little narrative tension and too little energy to put this one over.