My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar Wai. 2007)

The people who say this is a bad film seem to be forgetting that last year there was a film released called 'The Sex Lives of Potato Men' (which I've not seen, so I couldn't possibly comment, ahem). This isn't a bad film at all; despite the fact that Kar Wai's long collaborative relationship with the wholly incredible Christopher Doyle (I forgive you, Christopher for your unpleasant and unwarranted comments about Sofia Coppola, you're a talented if somewhat boozy chap) seems to have come to an end, his visuals are as arresting and lovely as ever; the camera's gentle but incessant movement lulls the spectator into a dream-like state whilst mirroring the restless minds of the protagonists. Ultimately though, I felt that this film was really undone by the monotonous and almost unfeeling drone of Norah Jones's voice. The camera certainly loves her big brown eyes but I never felt that her troubles were of the sort that would send a girl off on a year long road trip in search of the secrets of life and love. In fact, it struck me that Chan Marshall, after seeing her on screen for a mere five minutes, would have done a far superior job . Maybe it's just because of the fact that her life seems to have been a slow-motion car crash caught on record, but she just seemed to have that whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking kind of world weariness that the central character really required. The most interesting moments in the film actually centre on the more peripheral characters (Rachel Weisz, I thought, was particularly good) rather than Jones's Lizzie. Because of Jones's lackadaisical (1 point to me for actually getting this word in somewhere) performance, the whole relationship with Jude Law's Jeremy (who doesn't seem to be able to decide whether he is from the Home Counties or Manchester) lacks credibility as well...what a shame!

Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach. 2007)

There have been some really fantabulous films released already this year but I think this has to be, for me, the cream of the crop so far. I would imagine that Baumbach's special brand of black and alien humour is not for everyone but it doesn't have the self-conscious clever-cleverness that seems to plague some American Indies. The themes of discontent and dysfunctional families are certainly not new (an obvious contemporary comparison being Wes Anderson, but one could go on), but Baumbach manages somehow to instill a sense of Bergmanesque solemnity into his films regardless of his warped and somewhat laughable characters - you're able to laugh because the situation is clearly not 'fixable' and it ends as quietly, neurotically and messily as it started. Yet, there is also a deep sense of underlying trauma, which the characters themselves have to laugh at in order to consolidate the tenuous hold they have on normality - a hold that continually threatens to disintegrate. I've never seen Nicole Kidman play such a loon before - a part which she pulls off extraordinarily well. Jennifer Jason Leigh, as always, I thought was marvelous and I didn't even mind Jack Black too much.