Lost in Translation

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

What's astonishing about Sofia Coppola's enthralling new movie is the precision, maturity, and originality with which the confident young writer-director communicates so clearly in a cinematic language all her own.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Fraught with a deep sadness and sense of yearning. Yet, it is also an enormously -- at times, even uproariously -- comedic film, not because it feels any obligation to be "funny" in some contrived, screenwriterly sort of way, but because Coppola has set out to make a movie set to the rhythms of real (rather than reel) life.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Fraught with a deep sadness and sense of yearning. Yet, it is also an enormously -- at times, even uproariously -- comedic film, not because it feels any obligation to be "funny" in some contrived, screenwriterly sort of way, but because Coppola has set out to make a movie set to the rhythms of real (rather than reel) life.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The fact that this kind of serious material ends up playing puckishly funny as well as poignant is a tribute both to Coppola and to her do-or-die decision to cast Murray in the lead role.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Simply put, Sofia Copolla's Lost in Translation is an amazing motion picture.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

This is one of the year's most subtly moving films, and a strong affirmation of Coppola's substantial talent.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Isn't about a May-December romance or a brief encounter in a faraway place. It's about being alone in a crowd and the power of unexpected friendships.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

It's impossible to conceive of this ruefully funny entertainment without Bill Murray, who is nothing less than brilliant.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Here he (Murray) supplies the kind of performance that seems so fully realized and effortless that it can easily be mistaken for not acting at all.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The connection between Bob and Charlotte, as Coppola shows it to us at the end of Lost in Translation, is a moment of intimate magnificence. I have never seen anything quite like it, in any movie.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Longer on atmosphere and observation than on story, but you don't mind: Coppola maintains her quietly charged tone with a certainty that would be unbelievable in a second film if you didn't suspect genetics had a hand.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

A delicate, beautifully observed study of impossible romance, Lost in Translation is one of the best films this year.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Giddily funny in a singularly American idiom, and shot, by Lance Acord, with an eagle eye for cultural absurdities, Ms. Coppola's film is also a meditation on love and longing, shot through with a sensibility that's all the more surprising for being so unfashionably tender.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

This year's must-see film.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a bento box of shifts, feints, hints and small, sharp insights, built around a surprisingly deep core of feeling. And it confirms Coppola as an artist to watch and relish.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Smart, funny, and splendidly acted.

Empire Rob Fraser

With cinemas dominated by underwhelming blockbusters and formulaic rom-coms, it’s easy to become disillusioned with the state of the movies. Thank the almighty, then, for Lost In Translation, which in 102 wondrous minutes will restore your faith in the power of the medium.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Coppola handles her film with very pleasant economy, with a kind of warm precision. Her father, who was one of this picture's producers, can be as proud of her as we are grateful.

Slate David Edelstein

This is the Bill Murray performance we've been waiting for: Saturday Night Live meets Chekhov.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It gets at something exquisitely human, so human that even movie stars feel it.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The movie contains priceless slapstick from Bill Murray, finely tuned performances by Murray and the beautiful Scarlett Johansson and a visual and aural design that cultivates a romantic though melancholy mood.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Gorgeously shot by Lance Acord, who makes Toyko a gaudy dreamscape that's both seductive and frightening, Lost In Translation washes away memories of "Godfather III," establishing Coppola as a major filmmaker in her own right, and reconfirming Johansson and Murray as actors of startling depth and power.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

As bittersweet a brief encounter as any in American movies since Richard Linklater's equally romantic "Before Sunrise."

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Coppola both wrote and directed, and there’s a pleasing shapelessness to her scenes. She accomplishes the difficult feat of showing people being bored out of their skulls in such a way that we are never bored watching them.

Time Richard Corliss

Watch Murray's eyes in the climactic scene in the hotel lobby: while hardly moving, they express the collapsing of all hopes, the return to a sleepwalking status quo. You won't find a subtler, funnier or more poignant performance this year than this quietly astonishing turn.

Newsweek David Ansen

Their (Murray/Johansson) brief, wondrous encounter is the soul of this subtle, funny, melancholy film.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

A lovely, quietly thrilling thing.

USA Today Mike Clark

Romantic comedies with two low-key leads can be asking for trouble, but one senses that the actors must have clicked on some fundamental level.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Don't stall about seeing Sofia Coppola's altogether remarkable Lost in Translation. It's a class-act liftoff for the fall movie season. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson give performances that will be talked about for years.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Dislocated from their native country and former lives, Bob and Charlotte come to establish a language of their own. Coppola has done the same, proving she boasts one of today's truly distinct filmmaking voices.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

A smartly written, confidently directed film that delivers big laughs while developing two of the year's most earnest characters and some of its most rewarding sentiments.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's a sign of just how much Coppola respects her characters that she doesn't make us privy to that final line: It is only meant for them to share. But like the rest of the ethereal Lost in Translation, you don't need to have it spelled out in order to feel it.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

There isn't another American screen actor who could have given this performance, not one who so deftly could have navigated the razor's edge separating the wiseacre and the wise.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Thanks to two delightful performers, you're drawn powerfully to the outcome.

Variety David Rooney

The film's unhurried pace will target it for discerning audiences only, but its wry humor and coolly amused observation of contemporary Japan should score with smart urbanites.

The New Yorker David Denby

Not much happens, but Coppola is so gentle and witty an observer that the movie casts a spell. [15 September 2003, p. 100]

Film Threat Stina Chyn

By the time the film was half over, I was ready to catch the next flight to Japan. Until travel arrangements can be made, though, I'll just watch Lost in Translation again.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Arguably, Lost in Translation is the American answer to Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece, "In the Mood for Love," though less about history, more about infatuation.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Coppola does a fair job of capturing the fish-tank ambience of nocturnal, upscale Tokyo and showing how it feels to be a stranger in that world, and an excellent job of getting the most from her lead actors. Unfortunately, I'm not sure she accomplishes anything else.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Coppola lacks a firm grip on this material, and it starts to get away from her midway through.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

This movie registers like a pop song that enters the mind only in fragments because, as a whole, it lacks the style or substance to be memorable.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It can be funny, but the humor is too often based in stereotypical perceptions of Asians (they're short, they're laughably polite, they eat weird food), and Coppola shamelessly invites us to laugh along with Murray's character, who, believe it or not, thinks it's hilarious when his hosts get their "r"s and "l"s switched.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Coppola hasn't delivered a turkey--it's a cute little movie, if not as rich as her brother Roman's similarly themed "CQ"--but when work this potentially satisfying remains flatly obvious, it's almost worse than being flat-out bad.