Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola's second film is a beautiful and quietly comic dissection of the loneliness and love shared between two Americans who meet by chance in Tokyo. Bill Murray delivers the performance of a lifetime as a melancholy, middle-aged American actor filming a liquor commercial in Japan, who meets a disenchanted young woman (the equally wonderful Scarlett Johansson) in his hotel bar. Through a series of wild adventures through Tokyo and intimate, late-night conversations about their lonely lives, loves, and fears, the two form an unexpected connection. (2003, 108 minutes. Rated R)