"A big deal no one is making: the first Western-language films by the two most inimitable, imitated Asian filmmakers of our time are opening in New York on the same day." So, on the same page, the L Magazine''s Mark Asch reviews both Hou Hsiao-hsien''s Flight of the Red Balloon and Wong Kar-wai''s My Blueberry Nights, "a film as American as apple pie, and as out-of-time iconographic as that phrase implies."

"If I was a snarkier writer, I''d say that this is a love story to New York from someone who''s still afraid of Manhattan subways," blogs David Lowery. "Which is true, as evidenced by some of the dialogue in the film, but Wong''s foreign perspective on Americana isn''t necessarily a problem; nor is it the English delivery that makes his dialogue so bad, or Norah Jones''s lack of acting experience that makes her lovelorn monologues so cloying. It''s just that it''s all so damn trite, a problem exacerbated by a serious case of self-importance."

Updated through 4/5.

Posted by: dwhudson    Source

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