#1 Cheap Lost in Translation [Blu-ray] Reviews
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2003's "Lost in Translation" is the kind of subtle movie that viewers tend to either embrace or be bored to tears by. It stars Bill Murray in a rare semi-serious role and a young Scarlett Johansson in one of her first adult movies, as two strangers adrift in a strange land.
As the story opens, we meet Bob Harris (Murray), an aging, past his prime action actor, in Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial. What should be a simple assignment turns into an extended agony for Harris, who is unable to communicate with his weirdly intense Japanese director and who is suffering massive jet-lag and the nagging of a spouse several thousand miles away.
We also meet Charlotte (Johansson), a young wife accompanying her workaholic photographer husband on assignment. Charlotte hangs around the hotel, bored and also jet-lagged.
Director Sofia Coppola takes her time letting her leads get together in the hotel bar, where they strike up a casual acquaintance that turns into a team effort to explore a bizarre, neon-lit nightime Tokyo landscape. The pace of the movie meanders, but Harris and Charlotte learn to cope with their shared exile through their honesty about their oddly similar situations in life. Coppola avoids the easy off-ramps for their relationsip; the ending is perhaps anti-climactic but appropriate to what Harris and Charlotte have wrought together.
"Lost in Translation" is an off-beat movie featuring two very capable actors working it out on screen. It is highly recommended to fans of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson as an example of their range as actors.
Lost in Translation [Blu-ray] Overview
Like a good dream, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation envelops you with an aura of fantastic light, moody sound, head-turning love, and a feeling of déjà vu, even though you've probably never been to this neon-fused version of Tokyo. Certainly Bob Harris has not. The 50-ish actor has signed on for big money shooting whiskey ads instead of doing something good for his career or his long-distance family. Jetlagged, helplessly lost with his Japanese-speaking director, and out of sync with the metropolis, Harris (Bill Murray, never better) befriends the married but lovelorn 25-year-old Charlotte (played with heaps of poise by 18-year-old Scarlett Johansson). Even before her photographer husband all but abandons her, she is adrift like Harris but in a total entrapment of youth. How Charlotte and Bill discover they are soul mates will be cherished for years to come. Written and directed by Coppola (The Virgin Suicides), the film is far more atmospheric than plot-driven: we whiz through Tokyo parties, karaoke bars, and odd nightlife, always ending up in the impossibly posh hotel where the two are staying. The wisps of bittersweet loneliness of Bill and Charlotte are handled smartly and romantically, but unlike modern studio films, this isn't a May-November fling film. Surely and steadily, the film ends on a much-talked-about grace note, which may burn some, yet awards film lovers who "always had Paris" with another cinematic destination of the heart. --Doug Thomas
A film about, by, and for the snobs - Oleg Atbashian - The People's Cube
Lost in Translation - a film about, by, and for the snobs. Two lifeless egotists, while suspended in sterile environment, happen to drift past each other and briefly develop an appearance of human relationship, then part ways and continue drifting aimlessly in that lukewarm formaldehyde of a movie. It was nearly as memorable and engaging as watching the movement of two floaters in a broken toilet. The fact that the toilet is very expensive and is located in a foreign country doesn't change the nature of what it is you're looking at.
Bring this plot to a studio and unless your last name is Coppola you'll be lucky if you can pitch it to the security guard without being slapped silly. The photography was great, though. It had an expensive look and feel, perhaps like everything else in the author's uneventful life inside that ivory tower of hers.
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