Lost in Translation review

[TAFKAn]

SPOILER WARNING: Last paragraph discusses the ending.

Got a chance to actually leave the house while grandma watched the two-year-old. Took my wife to see an excellent film "Lost in Translation".

This movie has already had a good amount of hype, so you've all probably heard what a wonderful, career-best performance Bill Murray gave. To be honest, I didn't find his performance so fantastic. It was good, but he's been good for a while now. It wasn't significantly better than he did in Rushmore and others.

The movie did a wonderful job of conveying the sense of being ill at-ease in a foreign country and really, truly, feeling like a stranger in a strange land. It's very hard to do and this film did it well.

It was genuinely funny as well. I laughed several times.

The general ennui and malaise of the heroes is belabored a little too much if you ask me. A good five minutes of the early part of the film could have been cut. We get it. They are unhappy and listless. Next. The director seems to think we're too stupid or something.

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Lastly, the movie ends with a terrible copout. Instead of a parting final word between the two main characters who have developed a wonderful rapport during the film without having sex (another thing that's hard to do), Murray's character whispers into her ear and we don't hear it.

I understand the point. It doesn't matter what he said. We can surmise what he said. I still say it's a cheap way for the writer to avoid actually having to write a knock-out punch of last line, which is what is expected here.

This review comes off sounding negative but I thoroughly enjoyed the film and it is one of the top films of the year.