Last night my girlfriend and I went to Lost in Translation at City Cinema. I thought it was a subtly well written, well shot film that was a touch too drawn out.
The basic storyline is that Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a washed up actor, is in Tokyo to shoot a commercial and happens to run into a younger woman named Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) who is in Tokyo with her photographer husband. The two share their early/middle-life crises as the film progresses.
Altogether, it was a smart film that was able to tenderly convey true human emotion and, recently, I've really been enjoying films that aren't overly ambitious but execute their subject well. Lost in Translation tackles a fairly limited and simple subject effectively and, to its credit, retains its focus and doesn't try to over-extend itself beyond that.
I'm not sure if it's just me, but I can't recall ever seeing random shots of Tokyo in a film before. I'm sure tons of films have done so, but it struck me while watching this film that I had never seen shots of the city taken from a moving car or long pans of the cityscape shot seemingly at random. This glimpse into what I can only assume is 'normal' Tokyo geography was well worth going to the film and Bill Murray's depressing karaoke didn't hurt either.
