Rating: 
Summary: Murray shines in a superbly unusual movie
Review: For the past few years, I have been concerned that Bill Murray, who has long been one of my favorite performers, had been relegated by Hollywood exclusively to supporting parts. After a string of wonderful box office films in the eighties and very early nineties, Murray had settled into playing largely supporting parts in a variety of smaller films, with Wes Anderson's RUSHMORE a major exception. This film, however, is a return to leading man status for Murray, and he makes the most of a great part. Murray plays American movie star Bob Harris, in Tokyo to make print and television ads for a Japanese brand of whiskey for $2 million. We are simultaneously introduced to Charlotte, the young, intellectual, pretty, and profoundly disoriented wife of John, a freelance show business photographer in Japan to do a series of photo shoots. Both are alienated from everything around them, unhappy in their marriages, unable to connect to the culture around them, and sleepless. One night both of them go to the bar rather than lay in bed awake, and they instantly click on some level. They spend the rest of their time together in Tokyo together (Charlotte's husband is out on an extended shoot), and they each discover in the other someone they enjoy, can confide in, and trust. Is it a love affair? A deep friendship? The beauty of the film is that we don't know. But we do get to witness two people, one famous and one unknown, one middle-aged and the other very young, connect on a very deep level. Sofia Coppola has quickly established herself as a first rate director. Luckily, having a father who owns his own studio should guarantee that she is able to continue making films. Luckily, her talent as a director keeps this from being sheer nepotism. I liked THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, but her success with LOST IN TRANSLATION shows that that film wasn't a fluke. This is the best film featuring Tokyo that I have ever seen made by a non-native of Tokyo. There is, of course, a wealth of great Japanese films featuring Tokyo, but these are all insider films, viewing Tokyo as they know it. It is, for them, home. But this film shows Tokyo as it appears from the outside, as it would appear to folks like me if they were to go there for the first time. The film has one of the best, most satisfying, and completely ambiguous endings I have ever seen in any film. The beautiful thing is that no one knows how it ends. I'll not give any more away by saying more except to say that I don't think we, the viewers, are supposed to know how it ends. Very beautifully done. As far as the future goes for Bill Murray, he already is committed to do the voice for feline Garfield in the movie of the same name (as unwilling as I will be to see that one, it will probably be a big success at the box office) and will star in Wes Anderson's next film. After this film and those, I think Murray will be back in a big way.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Beautiful
Review: I truly believe this is one of the best films of the year. I felt as if I was right there with Charlotte and Bob as their relationship was unfolding. Heart-warming, etc., etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Bill Murray finally shines, as the Star over Tokyo
Review: Sofia Coppola has brought Bill Murray to a role that thoroughly establishes him as a gentleman, when he must leave his family of 25 years to come to Tokyo on business. He is received in a style at the Park Hyatt hotel that befits his fame as Bob Harris the movie star, and now the spokesman for SunTory Whiskey. At the same time he declares for the camera that "It's SunTory Time", he is something of a disconnected insomniac, pacing around the suite and looking for something authentic. Well, it's not long before he crosses paths with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson, just out of college, and doing her best to be the wife of an itinerant photographer (Giovanni Ribisi, memorable from his recent role in "Boiler Room")). It is as if "men and women CAN be friends", to rebut Billy Crystal in Nora Ephron's pairing with Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally". In this case, the sex part really doesn't get in the way. We see what is perhaps a lampoon of some of the goofiness in the Japanese popular media, but Bob is game, and manages to crack a few unobtrusive jokes to keep the Bill Murray legacy alive and indeed perfected. Charlotte is transfixed by Bob, and wonders if he is in a mid-life crisis ("Have you bought your Porsche yet?"), but Bob just appreciates finding a friend who'll really listen to him. For those who loved the ineffable Bill, ever since he declared that "that's the fact, Jack" in "Stripes", this film is an incredible treat. We're talking Best Actor, without a doubt, on par with Jack Nicholson's final emergence in "As Good as it Gets". It is as if Charlotte has found a kindly comfort in this unusual mentor, who is fully willing to go to some decadent parties and off-color attractions in a camouflage T-shirt turned inside-out. It is strange, in a way, how Ribisi fades from the scene; it's as if he doesn't really care. But Bob would probably be the first to congratulate him, as a lucky man who doesn't know what it is to have such a wife. As the professional critics tend to observe, there's not a whole lot of compelling "story" to lead you along through this 105 minutes; it is as if Coppola has instead prepared some sort of magic lantern show, in which the viewer is simply shown one context after another in a very "polite" set of circumstances. This accounts for my 4-star rating. Bob Harris, though, is enough to keep you in your seat, and Bill Murray now has a local capstone on his cinematic legend as great as the spire of the 52-story hotel from whose windows he is found staring. But then, all folks go on, and we see, in the end, two folks who simply lived for their moments, before proceeding on, as their soul's assignments said they must. In this case, the generation gap has been a functional aid to an encounter that would not so readily have happened otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Charming, intelligent film.
Review: Have you ever just clicked with some complete stranger? By "clicked," I don't necessarily mean in a romantic way. I mean, you go up to this person who looks troubled or smart or wise or fun, even though you don't know them. And for some reason, you're able to talk with this stranger. You talk about things that matter. You know where they are, what they're dealing with. And they talk to you like they know what you're going through and where you're going with it. Maybe you were on vacation somewhere. Maybe it was a wrong number on a phone call. Maybe, just maybe, it was fate, giving you a hand and a person to lean on when you didn't quite know you needed it. Now, you and this stranger share a couple enchanted moments, where it seems like someone who doesn't know you is the only one who can hear you. And when the talk ends or the enchanted time with this stranger passes, you're somehow the better for it, even though nothing particularly substantial happened. Fate reminds you that you're not alone, and fate reminds you of the sort of wonderful person you really are, outside of all the day-to-day drama of your life or away from the minutae that surrounds your everyday existence. In Sofia Coppolla's LOST IN TRANSLATION, two strangers, Bob and Charlotte, share that kind of connection when they both end up in a Tokyo hotel, where they don't fit in with the world around them and don't seem to belong anywhere. So they come together. What they share is not quite a romantic love, but it is a romance. Their friendship provides them with solace, with enchanted moments. Their chats give them both the strength and the tools to deal with their real lives. They're strangers to one another, who may only know each other a week, but they understand each other at a time when both of them needed to be seen for who they were and understood. Bob's an actor in Tokyo doing a commercial and taking a break from his exasperated wife. Charlotte's accompanying her photographer husband on a business trip - even though he leaves her alone for most of the time - because she didn't have anything better to do back home. She's in the process of discovering her identity. He's in the process of rediscovering who he is in the midst of the life he's grown tired of leading. And they help each other. This film is completely charming and very mature, having its characters understand and explore some fundamental aspects of human nature and identity. The film is also very funny, exploring a clash of cultures and examining the weirdness of how you can sometimes get to the heart of who you are when you're away from everything you're familiar with. The acting, particularly from the leads, is excellent. Scarlett Johansson's character is so fully realized that you want to hug her, and Bill Murray gives the best performance of his career. The film is beautiful to look at. The story's wonderful and smart, and the script is amusing yet serious. LOST IN TRANSLATION helps you feel better about yourself. It reminds you that there are people out there just like you, who know who you really are and where you're going. I love this movie.
Rating:
Summary: 1 incredible story, 3 amazing talents, and a dazzling set
Review: This movie is one of those rare films that is perfect. Yes,
perfect. It may not cover ethical issues, it is not outrageous or controversial...it is one of the most beautiful love stories ever. It is simple. It is perfect. The story is about two lonely people, in a place they don't connect with, with people they don't connect with. Bill Murray plays an actor past his prime who is in Japan making some cash by doing whisky adds. He is married, has kids, and forgets their birthdays. His wife does not say "I Love You" before she hangs up the phone when he calls her. He spends his sleepless nights hagning out in the bar of his over the top modern Japanese hotel having a drink.
Scarlette Johanson plays Charlotte, she is married to a self-absorbed photographer who always leaves her alone in the over the top modern Japanese hotel. She spends her sleepless nights hanging out in the bar having a drink, and staring out the window at the city of lights (I mean LOTS of lights, Tokyo puts Las Vegas to shame when it comes to lights).
These two lost souls meet and form an unlikely friend/love bond. This is not a lustful bond on either of their parts. Their love is love in the truest sense of the word, pure and real. When I said this movie had 3 amazing talents, well the other would have to be Soffia Coppola. Following her indie success with "The Virgin Suicides" which I highly recommend, she brings out a more adult, sophistocated movie. This movie is also VERY funny, but in a very subtle way. Bill Murray is marvelous, so natural. The humor is based on our misunderstandings of the Japanese culture, and their misunderstandings about ours.
Look for oscar nominations for this one. It blows all the competition away for movies this year.
Rating:
Summary: A dreamy, funny, poignant little film.
Review: Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" is a delicate, well-acted, visually astonishing film about the dislocation of being alone in a foreign culture and the desperate need for human connection. At the heart of the story is the brief encounter between Bob, a middle-aged movie star in Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial, and Charlotte, a bored young wife left alone in Tokyo by her self-centered, workaholic photographer husband. Both are adrift and without moorings in a society where virtually nothing is familiar or reassuring--except, as it develops, each other. The film is essentially a string of vignettes, without much in the way of a narrative line, and the story--such as it is--loses momentum in the last half-hour. But that doesn't matter much, thanks to the quiet, delicately nuanced performances of Bill Murray as Bob and Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte. Murray, especially, is revelatory: his face in middle age has taken on some of the craggy gravitas of Robert Mitchum and Johnny Cash, and the wounded, melancholy look in his eyes haunts you long after the movie has ended. This is not to say that Murray doesn't give us some laughs; there are bits of business here as funny as anything he has ever done. (Chief among them are Murray's collision with a runaway exercise machine; his embarrassed encounter with a clownish talk-show host; and his martyrdom at the hands of an uninvited Japanese dominatrix who orders him to "lip" her stockings.) But it is the poignant near-romance between Murray and Johansson that you will remember, as well as the stunning photography by Lance Acord, presenting Tokyo as a cross between Las Vegas and the Brave New World.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Outstanding film in every way. Well acted, and directed as well as a nice view of Tokyo life. Bill Murray's finest acting. Excellent ending for a well done production. Scarlett Johhanson's character was excellent. She plays far beyond her years.
Rating:
Summary: Touchdown!
Review: Twice, a microphone boom appears in the frame. This is a way for directors to say, 'hi there, here I am', and I guess the second time was intended to make it clear to us that the first was not an accident. Kind of like this movie, which makes it clear that her first great movie was not an accident. This is a wonderful, beautiful, perfect movie. Directed by Sofie Coppola, two americans, one Bill Murray as an aging american movie star, the other (played by a newcomer named Scarlett Johansen), a young Harvard philosophy grad who has mistakenly hooked up with an american fashion photog husband. Two lost souls, they gradually form a bond during a week stuck in a hotel in Tokyo, which is apparently a city that includes huge, beautiful, peaceful places as well as unbelievably claustrophobic, technology riddled entertainment opportunities, so you get both the lovely buddhist visuals and the visual overload type stuff from the same movie. There's hysterical Bill Murray stuff too, but that's not the whole point, just a very entertaining extra, and there are lovely references to other parts of Murray's career, which resonate like the scene of Travolta dancing in Pulp Fiction.
Its a romance, but NOT one of those silly movies in which an old american guy implausibly gets to sleep with a young pretty girl. ... Anyway, it'll change your life. Go see it. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title
Rating:
Summary: If you've ever been abroad...
Review: Those who have ever spent some time abroad, and not just for a few days on vacation, will recognize themselves in the lives of Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson). The differences in culture overwhelm you at first, as they did Bob, and you're so tired from jet lag and the time change you barely notice your surroundings. After awhile, you might begin to feel as Charlotte does, isolated and lonely without any family or friends, an outsider observing another way of life. You begin to gravitate towards any other Americans that you encounter, which is what Bob and Charlotte find themselves doing.
Rating:
Summary: A True Classic
Review: I believe, as opposed to my family, that this is a true classic of filmmaking. With great acting, great cinematography and a smoothe, touching story, "Lost In Translation" proves itself to be one of the best films of the year so far. The story is as follows: Two married people who find that marriage can be tough come together, confused and lost in Japan, not enjoying themselves very much. But as they meet, they gain a wonderful friendship. And went it starts to have the potential to carry too far, they both must decide if they should stay faithful or have an affair. Bill Murrey has an Oscar potential role in this film. He is continuously sad, but maintains a subtle happiness that lights up the screen at times. It takes a great actor to balance that out. Scarlett Johannsen, suprisingly, takes on a similar role with a great force that really amazes you. They both make you sad, happy and inbetween at the same time. The cinematography, at times, was outstanding. There were certain affects that the camera achieved that really made you feel different emotions and see different things about the landscape and the person. It is quite interesting. Now, here are the disclaimers. It does movie relatively slow, but jokes keep it interesting. It is a romantic comedy. But don't be too discouraged if you don't like them. It is a different type. It also doesn't really have much of a climax. It has a subtle exciting end, but no action or anything of that sort. But those are the only issues. Otherwise, I recommend it to you, the reader of this review. Bottom Line: This is probably one of the best films of the century in an allround way spanning acting, directing, writing and pure enjoyment. (I give it an A+)
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