This little stunner from director Sofia Coppola proves without a shadow of a doubt that she has a lot more talent than her father, and also a much better idea of what is going on in the world. But then I have always found Francis Ford Coppola an arrogant, overrated hack, and the Godfather films are unwatchable drivel. But if it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have one of my favourite films of 2003. Bill Murray stars as a Bruce Willis type actor whose career as a movie star has seen better days. The reason why he finds himself in Tokyo, filming an advertisement for Japanese whiskey. In his myopic state he forms a bound with the much younger Scarlett Johannson, who is in town doing nothing as her husband photographs a rock band. And that is the story. We follow Bill and Scarlett as they journey through this very foreign land (Tokyo looks just like the future vision of L.A. in Blade Runners and as Bill copes with a kind of mid life crisis, Scarlett is trying to figure out her place in the world and what she wants to do with her life. Sufficed with a wistful air of lost opportunities, the film has one of the strongest atmospheres I have seen for years on screen. Coppola’s inability to succumb to cliché or easy story telling, make this a sobering and different film experience. Small, but very satisfying.