No Juice in My Blueberry Nights

As the lead in My Blueberry Nights, Grammy-winning jazz-pop chanteuse Norah Jones doesn't exactly dazzle. Her performance as a waitress, who ditches New York City for the open road after being ditched by her boyfriend, is "agreeable but bland," writes Todd McCarthy of Variety and "oddly behind the beat," observes Michelle Orange of the Village Voice. 

However, writes Glenn Kenny of Premiere, the movie's real problem is the script, which is filled with "platitudes about love and self and travel and absence." Blame filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, who, in his first English-language, US-shot film "falls into many of the traps foreign-language directors are prone to in the US, most notably a tin ear for American dialogue." (More independent film stories.)