Nora Jones can’t sing. In “Blueberry Nights” she proves she can’t act either. Her performance is so stiff, so alarmingly flatlined that coroners must’ve trailed behind her on the set to check her for a pulse.

Writer/director Wong Ker Wai deserves a pie in the face for casting a novocained novice in the lead. He also signed up an impressive list of acting luminaries to support Ravi Shanker’s daughter, including Jude Law, David Straitharn, Rachel Wiesz, Frankie Faison and Natalie Portman. But Jones’ ineptitude is contagious. Steely screen hunk Jude Law is hapless as Jeremy, the owner of a late night Manhattan diner that specializes in good food and few customers. His puppy dog performance is a mix of Leslie Howard at his most fey and the Galloping Gourmet. The usually reliable Portman deserves a booberry for her antediluvian assessment of an overblown trailer park trashette who has absolutely no sensible connection to the very reserved character played by Jones. Fortunately, the midpoint of the film focuses on Straitharn, Weisz and Faison, who remind us that good actors can overcome a padded, hackneyed script. Skip to their section and avoid the agita the rest of “Blueberry Nights” induces.

I broke procedure in reviewing the new 3 DVD set by Genesis by starting out with the 1 hour 50 minute “Come Rain or Shine” documentary, the third DVD that chronicles Genesis’ 2007 reunion tour. I’d advise you to do the same. If you’re Genesis fan, you know that after a 15 year-break, the Phil Collins-Mike Rutherford-Tony Banks triumvirate wasn’t going to release any in-concert footage that’s not note-for-note perfect, so the 2 DVDs devoted to their free concert in Rome in front of 500,000 fans are flawless. (Some of the song selections are heinous, but we’ll get to that.). The final European concert was captured in incredibly crisp tones and hues by director David Mallet. The “Come Rain or Shine” documentary, directed by film maker Anthony Mathile, will provide you with many insights (and inside jokes) that will further your enjoyment of the concert. You’ll understand the epic saga of “Conversation With Two Stools” for one, and appreciate the yeoman effort the design crew, lighting techs and stage minions put into erecting, testing and altering the monolithic, 10 million dollar special effects-laden stage.

The 2008 crime drama “The Air I Breathe” has nothing to do with the Hollies 1974 song (That was “The Air That I Breathe”), but it’s just as big a hit.

The film breaks down into four segments focusing on four characters. “Happiness” is played by Forest Whitaker, “Pleasure” by Brendan Fraser, “Sorrow” by Sarah Michelle Geller, and “Love” by Kevin Bacon. None of the characters names are mentioned in the film (proving you can go through life calling people “Hey You!” “Buddy,” or “Yo, Man!”). Geller’s character is referred to by her stage name, Trista, and at least two characters, an ambushing interviewer and “Pleasure” (Fraser), become fixated on trying to get her to tell them what her real name is. The film’s unifying character is “Fingers,” played with zeal by Andy Garcia.

I like John Cusack. I hate movies with kid actors. Imagine my dilemma when I received “Grace is Gone,” a weeper in which Cusack suddenly finds himself the sole parent for his two young daughters. Taking a bullet for Cusack’s sake, I tried to take in “Grace Is Gone” with an open mind. And guess what? Director/writer James Strouse tried so hard to make Cusack’s Stanley Phillips believable he turned him into a lifeless zombie who’s more bound up than a bar of government cheese. Cusack is too good an actor not to have an impact, even when he’s starting from a deficit, but it’s Shelan O’Keefe (who plays Stanley’s oldest coming of age daughter, Heidi) who’ll command your interest. Score one for the kid actors.

Improvisational comedy is the equivalent of watching a blind man balance on a high wire greased with margarine with a group of famished lions waiting below. If you’re not quick enough or smart enough, your ass belongs to the cats. That may not be how the Upright Citizens Brigade came up with “ASSSSCAT,” the title for their latest DVD, but the same concept applies. The troupe performs skits suggested by members of the audience, a dangerous concept if your audience is primary college kids with tricked out bongs. Every line is made up on the spot, and as the ideas begin to flow, the comics move in and out of the sketches like wrestlers in a tag team match.

What would you do to help your brother, your favorite uncle…yourself? Lie? No problem. Scheme? It’s my middle name. Kill? Well, that’s gonna cost ya. Woody Allen’s 2007 enjoyable suspense drama “Cassandra’s Dream” follows the plight of two working class Londoners, brothers Terry (better than you may think Colin Ferrell) and Ian (Ewan McGregor cast as the level-headed sibling), who find themselves behind a financial eight ball. The brothers are offered a risky way out that could either fulfill their dreams or turn their lives into an ongoing nightmare.

“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” opens with one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever witnessed (and I’ve seen “Caligula”). Blotchy, bloated Phillip Seymour Hoffman, playing an emotionally bankrupt corporate accountant, is having sweaty monkey sex with Marisa “oh my” Tomei (who plays Gina, his love-starved wife) in a filmy bedroom in Rio. Tomei’s obviously been to the gym more recently than Phil. It’s like watching W.C. Fields ravage Ava Gardiner. It’s very, very wrong, and it’ll make you feel like you’re going to need a shower with a high pressure hose and an exorcism in order to expunge the memory from your mind. The next time someone says there ought to be a more proportional split in screen nudity between men and women, remember this scene. Fortunately the film takes a quantum leap in quality and you’re spared further views of Hoffman’s pasty backside.

If ye be of the Mormon faith you’ll undoubtedly be offended by “September Dawn,” a 2007 film based on the September 11, 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah. The film gives a fictionalized/historical account of a little known incident in which 140 men, women, and children paid the ultimate price for trespassing.

The plot takes a few liberties with the actual events in order to support a fictional love story between emigrant ingénue Emily Hudson (corn-fed Tamara Hope, looking as if she stepped out of an Eddie Bauer catalogue), and teenage mutant Mormon heart throb Jonathan Samuelson (prairie Tarzan Trent Ford). A wagon train bound for California led by Captain Alexander Fancher (comfortable cowboy Shaun Johnston), mosies into a fertile valley belonging to the Mormon Church. The acreage is ruled by Bishop Jacob Samuelson (Jon Voight, as slithery as a snake in Eden. Oops wrong denomination). Fancher asks the Bishop if his 200 head of cattle and expensive horses can graze for a spell. In the tradition of keeping one’s enemies close, Samuelson, who harbors a hatred of gentiles, seemingly extends his hand in friendship, proving once again that guys with chin beards and no moustaches not only look creepy, they are creepy. Samuelson charges his eldest son, Jonathan, with the task of keeping an eye on the emigrant’s mares, but the only Philly he’s interested in is young Emily. The two quickly fall in love, make plans to marry and head to Californee.

Fight films are as diverse and as hit or miss as real life boxers. Some films, like the feel good underdog story of “Rocky,” float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Others bloat like a butterball and sting like a flea, such as Barbara Steisand’s punchless pugilistic spoof “The Main Event.” Then there are gritty, fact-based dramas like “The Harder They Fall,” “The Great White Hope,” and “Raging Bull,” films that successfully mix the brutality of the sport with the realities of life. “Resurrecting the Champ” mixes fiction with fact and is more pretender than contender, but it features a knockout performance by Samuel L. Jackson that deserves a ringside seat.

A bad actor can screw up a really good film (Elias Kotteas, Nicholas Cage, Pauly Shore anybody?) and a good actor can save a bad film. “Even Money,” a crime drama filmed in 2006, has seven great actors, and half a dozen of them get to rise above the safety first script that turns what should have been a winning film into a push.

The plot centers on the denizens in an unspecified city all looking for one big jackpot. There are four subplots that you know will somehow intertwine, and could even result in some of the characters criss-crossing into one another’s worlds. Carol Carver (Kim Bassinger, giving a winning performance), a respected fiction writer, has been spending her afternoons trying to get the slot machines to pay off when she should be tapping out her next best seller. As her family’s bank account dwindles, the lies she feeds her husband Tom (Ray Liotta, wasted in weak role), begin to mount. Worried Carol may be having an affair, Tom plays detective, following her to a casino and digging into her personal files, where he discovers she’s lost nearly $80,000, including their daughter’s college tuition. Desperate, Carol befriends Walter, a down and out magician who teaches her how to play Blackjack. The pair scores big at the tables, but Carol loses all of the money the next afternoon. Smitten with Carol, Walter tells her he has a way for her to win all her money back. He’s been given a tip by loathsome local crime wave Victor (a reptilian Tim Roth) that the St. Francis basketball team is going to lose its championship game against Loyola College….

I’ve always believed the stereotype that people from Ohio look and act like the pinched, pitchfork yielding farmer and his plain Jane wife depicted in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” painting. Acerbic comic Drew Hastings has changed my mind. Encased in a black designer suit, wearing Elvis Costello glasses topped off with a twisted 80s haircut, he looks like a grumpy Barry Bostwick with a tossed salad on his head, and acts as if he’s a citified, sarcastic Bohemian. “How do you like my new glasses?” Hastings asks the audience. “These are my Al Sharpton glasses. Big, black, you can see right through them.”

Hastings’s neurotic stage presence stems from his incongruous upbringing and the diverse places he’s lived in. He was born in England and moved to Ohio at a young age. (“Anyone a child of English parents? One? Very few of us survive.”) After living in Cincinnati, New York City, San Francisco, and Hollywood, Hastings tired of urban life and bought the farm in Ohio. He’s been a comedian/farmer for about four years, and his blue thumb (“I have a fifty percent kill rate”) provides him with some of his most creative material.

With a remastered print of the three hour theatrical film, promotional spots, a “making of” documentary spread out over 3 DVDs, plus post cards, and a Technicolor reproduction of the original program, trying to absorb all the material contained in this collector’s edition may feel as if the Roman Empire has fallen on you. But bear with it, citizen. The Miriam Collection’s “The Fall of the Roman Empire” has a forum for everyone, and is as sumptuous and striking as the film itself.

Released way back in 1964, “The Fall of the Roman Empire” isn’t as creaky as you might think. There’s none of the overboard, rip ‘em to shreds violence found in today’s productions (like watching 300 Spartans get hacked, severed and filleted down to none). It’s not an unforgettable epic in the vein of “Gladiator,” but it’s an enjoyable example of the extravagant epic genre. So if you’ve got young children, they won’t be exposed to anything they haven’t gawked at on prime time, making “The Fall” a good PG rated family movie night candidate.

It’s ironic that an entire generation has grown up not knowing who Tom Snyder was. “John, Paul, Tom and Ringo,” a 2 DVD set of “Tomorrow Show” interviews from Shout Factory, ought to enhance Snyder’s reputation as a provocative, determined and entertaining interviewer. Snyder, a former newscaster, hosted “The Tomorrow Show,” on NBC from 1973-82. His hard-hitting interviewing style, off the cuff exchanges with the stage crew, and cloud-wafting chain smoking made him a celebrity in his own right. He also had the distracting habit of making every interview about Tom Snyder. If you’re interviewing Uncle Floyd, that’s one thing. If you’re fortunate to have landed three out of the four Beatles, you need to be prepared, be polite, suck on your Salem and let them do the talking. Tom does none of the above, which makes “John, Paul, Tom and Ringo” an occasional out of control clown car. Snyder’s ego aside, these interviews haven’t been seen in twenty five years, and are worth delving into because it’s the Beatles, kids.

John….

(editor's note: Though I don't disagree with MJ's review and would strongly suggest the book over the movie, the girl in me must recommend the movie on the strength of the Green Dress which is uncredited but deserving of its own award.)

I have atoned for my many sins, having only dozed off twice while sitting through the dry as a doggie bone romance of “Atonement.” The film was recently nominated for seven Oscars and wound up winning just one – for best original score. The Academy can be shockingly wrongheaded when it comes to doling out awards, but in this case they got it right. There’s no doubt that “Atonement” deserved to be recognized, but “No Country For Old Men,” was the rightful winner for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor. “Atonement” is a lavish period piece, manna for the eyes, and the music is lush and elegant. But stunning? Spellbinding? Those words best describe “No Country For Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood.” “Atonement” is a Lifetime movie with a bazillion dollar budget.

Don’t cringe or chuckle when you see Ben Affleck’s name on the screen followed by the unlikely titles of director and screenwriter. “Gone Baby Gone” is a much better film than almost everything Affleck’s ever acted in, and it owes its success to a brilliant cast and Affleck’s ability to turn the suburbs of Boston into a central character.

The opening of “Gone Baby Gone” sets the viewer down in the middle of a media circus. A child, Amanda McCready, is missing from one of Boston’s congested, working class neighborhoods. Helene, her single drug huffing mom (marvelously trashy Amy Ryan), puts on a concerned front for the cameras, but in private, lounging on the couch in her seedy apartment, she’s more concerned about where her next high is coming from than her daughter’s safe return. Amanda’s aunt (tough love personified in the person of Amy Madigan) and uncle (working stiff Titus Welliver) hire a pair of young private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (boyish Casey Affleck, and the brains of the outfit, Amy Monaghan) to supplant the police department’s search, which after three days appears to have already reached a dead end.