REVIEWS & QUOTES

"Lost in Translation, which she (Sofia Coppola) wrote and directed, may well be the best movie of the year. Few other filmmakers have as deft a way with atmosphere or as clear a notion of how it can be used to enrich a story�no other filmmaker has as piercing a sense of youthful despair."

"Coppola guides her actors through beautifully shaded performances. Murray gets to utilize his comic skills in scenes that show him reacting to his bizarre surroundings but he also summons a touching gravity that we haven't seen before. Johansson gives her most eloquent performance to date and Ribisi and Ana Faris etch near satiric turns in their supporting roles. "

"Little (else) about this beautiful movie is standard, let alone predictable. Ms. Johansson makes acting look easy. Her instincts are sure and her spirit is sweet in this lovely portrait of a young woman whose vivid passion and intelligence have had nowhere to light. As for Mr. Murray, he gives the best performance of his career, but that doesn't begin to describe the mysterious grace or complexity of the tragicomic character he creates."

"It's Bill Murray's movie. I can't imagine another actor bringing the same wry wounded dignity to his role. The movie is lyrical, touching, and gently discombobulated. Coppola evokes the emotional intensity of a one-night stand far from home – but what she really gets is the magic of movies."

"That someone as young as writer-director Sofia Coppola could produce something as sophisticated and knowing as Lost in Translation was almost as baffling as Bill Murray's performance. As a combination of Buster Keaton and John Gielgud, Murray made us realize, even as the movie was unspooling, what a strange, lofty place he holds in the collective consciousness of movie-going America."

"Coppola is fascinated by memory, by moments – good and bad – that will never be forgotten, moments at the center of which are young women on the verge of something they cannot quite articulate but feel compelled to act upon. It's these particular moments Coppola has captured on film so beautifully and movingly."

"Sofia Coppola's ravishing Lost in Translation. Charlotte…played, with heart-melting moodiness, by Scarlett Johansson. Mr. Murray's subtle, aching, witty performance in Lost in Translation, which opened on Friday, is certainly a revelation – and murmurs about an Oscar nomination have already begun. But it is hardly the first in his long and varied career. Wow, you think, this guy is an amazing actor, but such expressions of amazement have been bubbling up, with increasing frequency, for 20 years."

"Sofia Coppola's sublimely romantic and subtle Lost in Translation finally marks the end of a season of brain-dead blockbusters. Bill Murray, who is nothing less than brilliant�"

"Bill Murray has become an actor of extraordinary range. She (Sofia Coppola) accomplishes the difficult feat of showing people being bored out of their skulls in such a way that we are never bored watching them. She does this by creating such empathy for Bob and Charlotte that our identification with them is almost total. Coppola has hit on a metaphor for modern alienation that is so mundane it's funny."

"Tart and sweet, unmistakably funny and exceptionally well-observed, this delicate and distinctive film did nothing but good for stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson and director Sofia Coppola."

"Best Picture: Lost in Translation is a four-star film. It transported me; it was an original voice. Best Director: If that's the best picture, then Sofia Coppola is the best director, and I also choose her for best original screenplay. Her approach is fresh, visual, lyrical. In the year of the massive male epic, I want to recognize the butterfly among them."

"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. A lovely film."

"Bill Murray as a Hollywood star adrift in Tokyo gives the performance of his career. And Scarlett Johansson, 19, matches him step for step as a Yale grad who finds something in him that's missing in her careerist husband. But the real star of this movie is Sofia Coppola, who wrote the year's best original screenplay and directed with a delicacy and precision that belie her thirty-two years. In only her second movie � The Virgin Suicides was her first � Coppola has found a unique voice."

Bill Murray has a beautiful, ironic gravity, Johansson a lusciousness, sweetness and keen intelligence. Together they click on screen. Coppola has a masterful shooting sense and really nail that sense of lonely displacement. The modern otherworldliness of Japan is also perfectly suited to the material. A knockout of a film � funny, smart, stylish but with a real heartfelt emotional core."

"An audacious dramatic comedy. That would be a problem if Translation's leads didn't have such electric chemistry, and if Coppola didn't have such a strong mastery of tone."

Murray can't regret his decision now, as the film showed him at his comic and dramatic peak (and inspired crushes in a whole new generation of moviegoers). Above all, Murray made 2003 "Santori time. (Scarlett Johansson)'s showing an acting range that her elder peers must envy. In Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, she perfectly captures the wise but confused young bride Charlotte…"

"Coppola simply honors the magnificent Bill Murray with a suitably wise and tender role. She understands that real romance is often accompanied by terrific restraint. She captures the neon beauty of Tokyo at night and pairs it with the perfect soundtrack."

"A smart, terrific new comedy with a surprisingly urgent emotional core! Delicate and electrifying! Chief among the pleasures is a great, understated performance by Bill Murray."

"Sofia Coppola's second film establishes her as a director with an assured, unique vision. She draws from Bill Murray one of the best performances of his career; he's heartbreaking as an aging actor stuck doing whiskey ads in Tokyo. Scarlett Johansson, who befriends him in a jetlagged haze, continues to prove she's an actress with maturity and wisdom beyond her years."

"Trapped in Sofia Coppola's genius vision of Tokyo, 2003. Fine as the stars are, and I'd love to see Bill Murray get an Oscar nomination, this is the director's film. She has all the chops, what a haunting movie, great performances, great eye for detail."

"I think that we're looking at an Academy Award nomination here, maybe for both of them. This is certainly one of the year's best movies. One thing I especially admired was the way Bill Murray dials down his gift for comedy, and finds just the right tired and subdued note. Any comedian can be really funny, but it takes a certain genius to be just a little funny kind of quietly funny, kind of wearily funny. It's quite a movie."

"Now this film is funny, it is melancholy, it is smart, it is poignant. Go see it."

"This is a crush movie. And somewhere around halfway through watching it, I got an incredible crush on the actual movie – every time I've seen it since, I've had a little date with myself."

"Lost In Translation is my favorite film this year. I loved it."