Rating: 
Summary: Extremely disappointed
Review: Being a huge Bill Murray fan, I went into this movie wanting to love it. In fact, I purchased the movie before we even watched it! I went into it with no expectations except that it was going to be wonderful in an unconventional way. But try as I might, I couldn't like it. I found myself zoning out. My fiance and I discussed it at length, trying to understand why we didn't like it or why we didn't "get it". Then it hit me - it shouldn't be this hard. Just because some people consider it a great work doesn't mean everyone will. Murray has a few funny lines as you would expect, but the dialogue is extremely limited. A close friend of mine loved the movie because "she knows what it feels like to be lost" - she connected with Scarlett Johansson's character. I'm not sure if that means anything. Very rarely do I watch a movie, especially one so critically acclaimed, and feel as though I've wasted my time.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for everyone, but my personal favorite
Review: If you are the type of person that needs art films explained to you by your deeper minded friends when the movie is over, then this film is difinitely not for you. This movie is hilarious and thought provoking all at the same time. Bill Murray is phenomenal! It's not that he is being real, as some other reviewers have written, it's that he can make the most mundane scene just drip with funniest irony imaginable. This may be one of his best roles of all time. You will know you understood the movie when it makes you think and rerun it in your mind over and over again just absorb every little bit of absurdity, hilarity, and subtle nuances. There is a plot, but you do have to pay attention to realize it. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Why you love or hate this movie
Review: .
One of the most interesting aspects of LIT is the market's reaction to it: most of those who caught it in a theater loved it, and a great many who've seen it first on DVD are angry with it.Why? 1) Well, the grouches are quite right--it's not much of a comedy, there's very little story, and the characters aren't going through giant transformations across the course of the film. If you're sitting at home with your significant other or a bunch of friends, if you're talking, if the sound of crunching snacks in your head is louder than the soundtrack, if the lights are on or the phone rings, forget it, you're done--it's like visiting a zen rock garden with a GameBoy, and your only shot at liking this film is personally relating to what the characters have experienced, or if you've been to Tokyo. 2) The rabid fans are quite right too--LIT is an "experience" film that is mismarketed as a Bill Murray comedy; it's all about sights and sounds, not story. It lets you know this from the very first shot, a long, wordless look at, um, Scarlett Johansson, with a quietly rising and subsiding sound clip from Kevin Shields, the songwriter of the greatest lost band of last twenty years, My Bloody Valentine (if you don't know, YOU BETTER ASK SOMEBODY). There's every chance this bombs at home, but in a theater, in the dark, with great sound and everybody shutting up, it works. That first shot sets the tone for LIT. There's not a single jump cut or sudden burst of sound in the entire film--it's supposed to be a slow, alluring, engulfing experience; again, this is terrific in a theater, but it's a fragile spell, and it's easy to see why it might not work at home. 3) The grouches are also right when they criticize the dialogue. In literal terms, not a lot is being said. If you don't attach to the characters at all, it isn't hard to start hating a young, pretty, apathetic whiner and a rich middle-aged whiner, both given the luxury of fretting full-time over existential problems, which, if you don't like the leads, seem pretty trivial. It's not hard to see why that doesn't make for a fun movie night. 4) The rabid fans can argue this one--LIT is very much about what's NOT said. Think about the most verbal characters in the film: they're babbling. The sweetly inattentive husband is wildly inarticulate--he's perpetually distracted, and constantly interrupting his own train of thought. The starlet (a snarky sendup of Cameron Diaz) grows more vapid by the sentence. Bill Murray's wife is nothing but a telephone voice, transfixed by carpet swatches and bored by everything else. And from the dead-serious commercial director to the ebulliently idiotic talk show host, there's no clear translation of the spoken Japanese. For God's sake, when she over-emotes her way through Scarborough Fair, the lounge singer is a self-parody, unintentionally echoing Bill Murray's famous SNL parody of a lounge singer pouring out Scarborough Fair. Every one of them is lost in translation. In a different way, so are Bob and Charlotte. The reason LIT doesn't have a story is that the entire film is an interlude--two people who suddenly find themselves together, sharing a break from their lives. And they both seem to really need it--they're sick of the meaningless conversations and logistics that drive their worlds. It's a classic use of the medium, to show the huge gap between what's said and what's seen. Bob and Charlotte are wonderfully quiet and accepting of each other from the get go--they don't have talk much to connect. If you watch for it, there's a silent shift in the film: before she meets Bob, Charlotte is rattled by how numb she feels when she visits a temple and retreats to her hotel room, surrounding herself with junk media. Before Bob meets Charlotte, he sleepwalks through his workday, producing junk media. After they meet, when they spend time on their own, they wander wordlessly and beautifully alone: Bob golfs by himself with Mt. Fuji in the distance, and Mt. Fuji floats by Charlotte on a Kyoto bullet train, as she heads off to visit another temple. They're discovering a less bewildering, more personal Japan, and retrieving themselves as they do it. And all this is shown, not spoken. 5) The grouches have a point: nothing freaking happens in LIT. 6) The fans answer: yeah, exactly. The key to the film is what doesn't happen between the characters. It's no accident that LIT takes place in bustling, frenetic Tokyo, or that the main characters are hopelessly jetlagged and out of sync with everything except each other. If that doesn't sink in early, then you'll miss the many charms of LIT, from the long, lovely shots, the sweet, spare exchanges between Bob and Charlotte, the gorgeously slow shoegazer/trip-hop/dream pop soundtrack (the best since Trainspotting, High Art,and Ms. Coppola's last film, the Virgin Suicides), and the electrifyingly silent ending. So, sorry if you hated this film. Have a drink, maybe two, turn the off lights, don't talk, watch it again, and you might change your mind. (Oh, and if you take into account EVERY image of Japanese people in this film--the businesspmen and women, the artists, the florists, the crowds in the street, the surfers, the strippers, the monks, the bride and groom, the elderly patient, the doctor, etc.--it's harder to argue that LIT is an anti-Japanese film, and easier to see it for what it is: an outsider's POV of a few silly and sublime experiences in an unfamiliar culture).
Rating:
Summary: Lost in Translation
Review: I see broad disagreement concerning "Lost in Translation". I feel that this is one of the best movies of the year. Among my friends who hated the movie, I have found that they where expecting a comedy. Maybe a "Groundhog Day in Tokyo" or something. Parts of this movie are humorous, however, parts of "On Golden Pond" where humorous, and no one bashed that movie for not being funny enough. This is not a comedy. It is a serious movie. Comedies rarely get nominated for "Best Picture of the Year". "Lost in Translation" is an excellent movie about a middle aged guy, with a failing career, stale marriage, who does not know where he wants to go with his life. Juxtaposed to him is a young wife, whose husband is focused on the things young husbands are devoted to: career, glory, attention of other "cool" people, etc. The older man and the younger woman are looking for someone to share their day to day lives with. Concerning the "lack of chemistry" between the two main characters, I have to say that the main male character is confused about his feelings. On one hand, he is protective of this young wife. On the other hand, he likes being with her in a male/female way. He is not a guy looking for a one night stand. He wants a relationship, which he can not have with this young girl, so he remains torn. This is a deep movie about youth vs. age, male vs. female, and the range of emotions a middle aged guy goes through. Not the sports car and gold chains stereotype we have seen before, but a decent guy who has hit a roadblock in his life and is wondering how to get around it. In addition to this, I found the sights, sounds, and interpersonal interactions to be very enjoyable. I have visited Tokyo about 10 times and still have the same feelings that the main character was expressing well in the movie. About 25% of my enjoyment of the moving is this. For those of you who hated this movie, all I can say is that the movie was not for you. It is for us decent middle aged guys who are in the middle of figuring out where we go from here. The phrase "Lost in Translation" not only applies to cultural differences, but also applies to the confusion created by the transition from young adult, to middle aged, to senior adult. Bill Murray portrays well (not flawlessly, but well) a guy at the pinnacle of this transition. This is a complex topic done well in "Lost in Translation".
Rating: 
Summary: It's Hard To Believe How Terrible This Film Is
Review: I had high hopes for this film but none of them were realized. I absolutely hated LOST IN TRANSLATION and I think it's a complete waste of both time and money. The premise was a good one, but both Coppola's screenplay and her direction were so terrible they have to actually be experienced to be believed. I don't have words to write how bad this film is. LOST IN TRANSLATION is the most flat, trite and banal film I've ever seen. It's so rough--and not just around the edges. There's absolutely nothing polished about this film. I don't need a lot of plot in either books or film, but I need something besides people mumbling inane drivel and performing meaningless actions, which is really all LOST IN TRANSLATION offered. The dialogue was awkward and clumsy and consisted mostly of mumbled, meaningless phrases. The camera angles were strange and gave me a sort of sick sense of vertigo and I don't even suffer from vertigo. The transitions from one scene to the next were awkward. There was no character development. The set up was far too long and then, after Coppola finally "got to it," nothing happened. I mean nothing. I think both filmmakers and novelists can learn a good lesson from the failure of LOST IN TRANSLATION--absolute reality doesn't translate well to film. If Coppola had given me characters I could care about, I wouldn't have cared that LOST IN TRANSLATION was totally lacking in plot. But she didn't. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson did their jobs well, but Coppola didn't give them anything to work with. Their talents were wasted in this piece of inane drivel that Coppola calls a film. If you want to be bored to tears, if you need a soporific or if you just want to see how bad filmmaking can be, then, by all means, see LOST IN TRANSLATION. It won't let you down. If you want something entertaining or enriching, however, steer clear, because you certainly won't get it here. I have to agree with all the reviewers who said when critics say something is good, everyone else just wants to jump on the bandwagon instead of making up his or her own mind. If I could give LOST IN TRANSLATION negative 10 stars, I would. It is, by far, the worst film I've ever seen and it's demeaning to the Japanese people as well, who are, in reality, wonderful hosts. LOST IN TRANSLATION is something to be ashamed of. Definitely. Coppola should really learn how to write before foisting such trash onto the public.
Rating:
Summary: BOYCOTT THIS DVD
Review: Before you can watch this DVD you must sit through 10 minutes of Universal Studios commercials. There is no way to bypass the commercials. Please help support the boycott of this highly unethical practice of forcing customers to watch commercials. You wouldn't stand for listening to commerical on a music CD would you? Why stand for it on DVDs.
Rating: 
Summary: Good. But great? I don't know.
Review: Sadly, sometimes this happens: You read so much about "the best movie you'll see all year" before you see it that the film in question could never live up to the hype. That's what happened to me with Lost in Translation, although I doubt that I'd feel much differently if I'd seen it cold. It's not bad, but I can't call it great. It has a lot to recommend it. There is some very funny material, especially in the beginning as Bill Murray's character films his Japanese whiskey ads. The acting from both Murray and co-star Scarlett Johansson is top-notch, just as all the other reviews you've read indicate. The cursory outsider's look at Japenese culture is amusing and interesting. I'm just not that crazy about the story. Murray is a middle-aged actor whose 25-year-old marriage isn't going so well and whose career is without direction. Johansson is a young Yale grad whose 2-year-old marriage isn't going so well and whose career is without direction. They wander around Japan moping about this, apart for much of the movie. Then they get together briefly, share a few friendly conversations, and that's just about it. In the first place, I had trouble caring about these two at all, because all they do is mope about their hotel, and make no effort to make their visit to Japan more interesting for themselves. If your life is so rotten, quit your whining and get out there and do something about it! I don't need every movie I see to have sympathetic characters. _About Schmidt_, one of the best movies of 2002, certainly didn't. But that film didn't really expect you to care about anyone, and instead taught an important lesson. This movie, on the other hand, depends upon you feeling for these two, and I didn't, for the most part. I did feel a stir of emotion at their parting scene, but I think that was just because it was a well executed scene, not because of anything that had come before. The other problem was that the film didn't seem to spend much time building the relationship between the two. They went out a couple of times, spent one late night talking, and that was about it. I didn't understand why their attachment was supposed to be so strong after such a brief time together. I wanted to love this movie. Praise for it has been so strong that I believe I must give it another chance, and I will. You should give it a chance too--it's worth it, at least for the funny stuff (and the talented and pulchritudinous Miss Johansson).
Rating:
Summary: This movie "lost" me.
Review: I watched this after the Oscars and I can see why Sofia won, however it's not my cup of tea. Call me shallow, but I just didn't get it. Great soundtrack though! Debbie Farmer, parenting author of 'Don't Put Lipstick on the Cat'
Rating:
Summary: BORING!!!!!!!!
Review: I thought it was gonna be a great movie and couldn't wait to see it when my mom brought it back from Blockbusters. During the film I wanted to go to sleep but I kept on thinking that something exciting was going to happen. That something never did hapen though. I can't believe that some people actully enjoyed the film!!! When it was through, everyone in my family were completely BLANK!! We were all mesmorized by the terrific boredness of the movie. The movie is about boring people being bored and it will leave you as bored as the movie. To me, I would never see the movie and to the academy, what in the world were you thinking even to NOMINATE this movie!!! The funny parts are only funny if you are desperate and there are not that many funny parts.(...)
Rating:
Summary: FEEBLE and PATHETIC imitation of Wong Kar-Wai.
Review: I have reached the conclusion that all critics who love this movie have not seen the films of Wong Kar-Wai. This is a truly abysmal imitation of a Wong film (Sofia Coppola thanked the director in her Oscar speech for "inspiration"), in particular "In the Mood for Love". Whereas Wong's film boasts sparse but rich dialogue, a complex storyline, beautiful cinematography and enchanting music, Coppola's imitation has sparse and pointless dialogue, an underdeveloped and shallow plot, and merely modest cinematography and musical direction. Murray does a fine job in this movie, but Coppola clearly has very little to offer other than truly offensive stereotypes of Japanese people. Watching this movie was a totally painful experience for me, and I am so glad that I only rented it from the video store, to which I promptly returned the DVD. I recommend everyone to stay away from this movie and buy something from Wong Kar-Wai instead. Try "In the Mood for Love" or "Chungking Express"...you will be amply rewarded. This is worse than an imitation crab-stick, and it is about time the critics realized that.
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