Lost in Translation (2003) vs Her (2013)

A warm beer, a cold opening week, and then the emotional whiplash of two movies that won’t let us stay comfortable. We start with the simple stuff we love, Mets Opening Day traditions, season-ticket routines, and why we sometimes just want entertainment that feels easy to pick up and enjoy. That’s also why the Crimson Desert discourse grabs us: if a game takes eight hours before it “clicks,” is that depth or unnecessary friction?

Then we get personal with film talk. Lost in Translation becomes our lens for expatriate loneliness, quiet friendship, and the way Sofia Coppola lets meaning live in pauses instead of plot twists. We dig into Bill Murray’s understated comedy, Scarlett Johansson’s divisive character beats, and why the ending can feel either honest or maddening depending on what you want from a story.

From there we step into the unsettled territory of Her. Spike Jonze turns AI romance into a mirror for modern relationships, attachment, and emotional dependence, and we don’t dodge how uncomfortable that can be. We connect it to sci-fi history like Star Trek, argue about how fast “AI emotions” should evolve, and unpack the gut-punch moment that turns love into impossible math.

If you like smart movie analysis, big feelings, and the occasional baseball rant, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: which film hits harder for you, Lost in Translation or Her?

Transcript

Beer Vibes And Opening Banter

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Rich, and uh I'm not gonna lie to you, this uh I kind of get vi like chop a can of vibes here. I'm I'm really I would say actually uh voodoo ranger vibes, uh juicy haze IPA vibes, uh unofficial, official uh beer of the podcast. But uh I I unofficial but uh I think that there's there's a lot of juice here for us to uh unpack in this episode, but we can't do it, just the three of us.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

We need one more, and that person is called the the the Yeah, I was a huge fan, huge fan, huge fan of that.

Mets Opening Day Traditions

Crimson Desert Hype And Backlash

SPEAKER_01 8:31

From rebirth. It's really all I can say. Like tomorrow, okay, today in New York, right? It is the high was I think 51. All right. On Saturday, the high is going to be 41. Tomorrow, opening day for the New York Metropolitans, it will be 70 degrees. I am very excited to go there. Uh I'll go on opening day. Uh traditions, first season, full season tickets. Uh, gonna get uh get get everyone up there, all right, uh, this season uh on the uh 514. So if uh you're listening because you really like loss of translation and you're a huge Met fan. Uh I'll be in 514 so you guys can come meet me. I'll be there all season. Say what's up. Uh don't be shy. But uh I'm really excited about that. But really, I've been deep diving into Crimson Desert this week. I didn't buy the game, I've just been watching reviews. Now I usually watch I watch pretty measured reviews, right? And uh, you know, I have some trusted sources, but uh on my YouTube channel, someone came up and just said like Crimson Desert, terrible. And this person dumped on it for like 25 of the most hilarious myths you've ever listened to. It was one of the most enjoyable things I've seen on YouTube in years. Uh it was like it was just completely annoying because uh part of what they a lot of the reviewers are saying is that it has so many systems that it takes about eight hours for you to truly learn how to really play the game and where you're not as confused. So, you know, that's a pretty big learning curve. You know, the points being made. Like, who wants to get something that takes eight hours to get good, you know?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

You didn't have to be a good time.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Is it's just so quick. I can just play a quick three inning game, put it down, walk away, you know. Or I could play for a couple hours. This that's the type of game that I'm gonna wait for the summer, I think, especially with what I'm hearing with like glitches. I don't uh I don't want to deal with that kind of frustration. I just want to have a good time. So uh I'm gonna hold off and probably just play Red Dead at least one more time. You know, why not? Maybe watch Game of Thrones the whole thing four times, but I will not watch all of One Piece because that's way too much.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Oh that that was I see what you did there.

Losing The Plot In Tokyo

Why Her Feels So Unsettling

Star Trek Already Warned Us

Cyrano Letters And Borrowed Voices

Can AI Emotions Grow Too Fast

The Fake 9-9-9 Ballpark Deal

Break Plans And Final Picks

SPEAKER_01 14:56

The Partridge family, you know, kids, they they learned on tour, you know, like they were fine. I don't understand. So I why can't these kids just why can't these kids just like it's just ridiculous. Or just get like twins of all of them. Look, look at this. Look. Full house full house. Listen. You can't be to be fair, I don't think spoiling a movie from nineteen forty is terrible. I mean, to be fair, I haven't seen it, so I now it's spoiled, so thanks. Um, but you know. So I I have a little bit of a connection with the movie, in only that I brief I vaguely knew that it was about you know Bill Murray going to Japan. And uh that's all I knew. And I knew that there was whiskey and Scarlet Johansson. So every time I see him or I send him a message on WhatsApp to see how he's doing, I referenced the I basically referenced the trailers to the movie. Uh and I'm just asking him if he's seen Scarlet Johansson or how's his whiskey, you know, things like that. Uh so then I went to watch the movie, and it was not what I thought it was gonna be. Uh I've seen a lot of Bill Murray movies, right? So I had a certain expectation, and uh it was a little different uh than I was expecting. So no, I would have liked some slime, a little bit of ghosts, you know, uh even golfing, some you know, some maybe some gophers coming out of holes. Uh there's there's a lot of stuff that I would have uh I don't know. So he's still Bill Murray, so I I really I mean I just enjoy him as an as an actor. I just the his delivery, I think he's funny no matter what, even when it's not you know it's not uh audience like gut busting funny, but he he still makes me uh chuckle uh throughout the entire movie. Uh I found Scarlet's character to be a little annoying at times, and I didn't get the interplay between them completely, but you know, the expatriate thing uh kind of commiserating together and the isolation made like that I thought was conveyed really well. Uh, but I did have a feeling sometimes of um where exactly is this going? Like what's the crescendo, what's the you know uh the conflict and the and the resolution. And uh I guess like life there is Which is uh a little bit. I do like my story is wrapped up in a bow uh at the end. So it and I kind of I had to rewind it a couple times. I was like, oh, I don't that's the end. Okay, uh no more. So I definitely delivered on I think the intention. I watch movies about people I like, and I had a really hard time here. I you know, I like Bill Murray, and then I was like, oh no, what is she doing? And she's so young. What's going on here? I was uh uncomfortable. I didn't like the kiss at the end. Uh uh, Bill Murray. I mean uh it's uh a man of that. Uh it seems like you wouldn't pull something like that. The the idea that then she would keep it in the film though is weird. I don't understand at all. Can you guys so you said that that wasn't originally filmed, right? So it just I think like you said, it just changed. As one of my students as one of my students would say, Chat, my son walked in during one of these scenes. Okay. It was hard. I mean, I my son watches me drag drag people on a horse and direct. It was it was quite ride, guys. It was quite hard. Uh uh I just want to I I didn't I start watching it. I obviously walking Phoenix. I just gotta start off. I don't know why maybe it's because a gladiator. He I've always thought of him as being like this underhanded. Like he's he tells me as like a guy I don't want to like, like a guy I can't trust, like there's something off. I mean it was deeply uh disturbing and convinced me that you know he is hackers. Here's the thing about you guys, all right? You do a good job, right? And then you're like, hey, don't worry, that's not me. I'm gonna be a good guy in that other movie. No, I you've convinced me, sir. I don't care. Hans Gruber. Hans Gruber, see? He's the for me, he's Captain Ron. He'll always be Captain Run. Fantastic. Alright, so so would you tell me that walking care walking Phoenix's character in this movie does not unsettle you? You would say that this is a person that you would like to befriend and hang out with and maybe go on a picnic with their eye partner and uh have a little bit of wine. Yeah, and have some Let's be very clear, all right. If you want to talk about a lonely man falling in love with a computer system, all right, you need look no further than Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, played by Dwight Schultz on Star Trek The Next Generation. He's all right. He's the original guy. Like he literally was the guy who like was in the um oh my goodness. Uh I'm saying Danger Room in my head a thousand times. Holodeck. Alright, he's in the holodeck, and that guy went went too far, all right. Like he I think I'm pretty sure he made like a holodeck version of like Deanna Troy, and it was like getting with her, right? You know, all right. So I mean we we've had this guy before, you know. Uh the difference here is that uh this movie it's so unsettling. It I I wasn't it I don't know, I don't know how to explain this. Like this movie bundled all of the emotions that I avoid, right? That I will run from. Like I have told all of my classes that if anything happens to my wife, I'll just become a Jedi. I would not want to engage in the process once more. All right, I'll just dedicate my life to the force, and that's fine with me. I'll buy a$500 lightsaber and that call it quits, you know, like just take care of it. And this movie confirmed that for me. The the dread, the existential dread that uh of the uh of of the uh Samantha not answering, right? Of the OS not being installed, right? The way he was running and falling and and physically in pain. Yeah, the the the way he looks, that pregnant pause when she introduces the philosopher guy. I could not believe what I was hearing. I because you get to the point in the movie where you're like, okay, his friends accepted it, so I guess it's gonna work, right? This I don't know why, but this is dumb, but okay, this is where it's going. And then I was like, oh my goodness, he's going to get dumped. And the most offensive thing in the entire movie is the number 641, ladies and gentlemen. Because Samantha says that she is in love with 641 other people, and here's the thing, guys: 150, 20, 25, right? Those are nice round numbers, uh inoffensive numbers almost. Large, but inoffensive, right? Sometimes 100 is a large number, but that's in that's still there's something mean and pointed about 641, right? My wife has long loathed one thing about me, and when she asks me to raise the volume on the TV, I always purposely stop on like some weird, odd number. Maybe sometimes 67. Yeah, I did that. I don't care. I'll do that just to get her higher, right? Because it offends her. She's like, what 67? Like, that's terrible. Like, like, stop 41? Like round numbers. That was mean. That was mean as as a as a what I as a program that must have started from binary, right? From ones and zeros. Like ending 641 is one of the meanest things I've ever heard in a movie. And I don't know, man. I can't. I'm a bundle of of emotions. What are you talking about? Why would you say that? It's making me so infurating. Infuriating. This movie makes me feel all the I'm telling you, it's all the feelings I dislike feeling. Like the only thing that they could the only way this movie could make me feel like more irritated by its evocation of my emotions would be if it's like the Mets lost the world series. Like in that in the movie, they're like, oh, and the Mets will lost the world series. But it'll get twisted. Like in Cyrene, he writes letters to fall to get I think it's Rosalind, but I'm thinking of a Roxanne to fall in love with another man. And he Cyroneau de Bergerac, it's a uh French play. It was also a Steve Martin movie in the 1980s where he he has a lar a very large nose. And it's just that he's got he's like he's got a large nose and he's very unattractive generally, but he is an amazing swordsman and he's also a fantastic poet. So a rather dim-witted uh soldier asks him to start writing letters to a very intelligent young uh you know debutante in uh the the king's court kind of thing, and Syrano writes these letters, these love letters essentially, these love poems, and Roxanne falls in love with the soldier because of Cyreno's words, right? And I I I kind of see a little bit of similarity here, and then he falls, he's in love with Roxanne himself, which is what kind of drives these letters, right? And obviously the movie deviates there, but it there is this idea of like kind of plagiarizing letters because you're just not as eloquent. I mean, I just uh you know it was unsettling, but I I also it it was it was odd. I mean, I I I th I still think that his behavior was a bit odd and um maybe uh in the m uh on the date. Uh oh no yeah, in the movie overall, yeah. But I I I do think that uh it was you know, he he was accelerating things as quickly as she was at some point, and I think it was just his uh he hit the panic button there. I mean, uh now I know her reaction it's weird because I I didn't think that anything was going oddly until her reaction was definitely uh you know very aggressive, right? In a way that was disarming and and and unsettling. But um yeah, I thought the movie was gonna take a turn there. I was like, hey, he's gonna, you know, embrace life, you know, but uh yeah. At first I thought that was the link. I didn't do any previous research, um, or you know, so I I thought at first I was like, oh, it's because you know she's the main character of her. I mean, uh I mean I know technically, you know, we don't see her in her, but it we all know it's her, right? So uh I have an issue with like like what you're s okay, there's a part of me, and maybe it's just because I've seen this like roll out in like other forms of science fiction kind of right where where uh an AI or whatever develops emotions, right? And but it it just seems so quick. I mean, I understand that the movie has a certain amount of time, right? But it's just like it's like it's like the 1.0 comes out, right? And then within like apparently just months, it already like hyper, like you know, transcends everything, you know, and and and a lot. Are you trying to say that my man Data was not an advanced, all right? Like this is it took a long time, all right? Like it took a long because okay, I I'm being glib, but I I I do want to say this. It's just it seems that the AI is able to develop emotions, but in a way that's like tempered, right? Like, you know, one of the things I loved about when Data starts feeling emotions in Star Trek, right? Is he just like he's so happy and then he's so sad and he's so angry because he doesn't know how to control it, right? He doesn't know, like it's it's a lifetime of of exploration and and and and and figuring things out, right? Like, you know, we we hear as small children there's no use crying over spilt milk, right? Because at first, like that you cry because you made a mistake, and then you learn that that's not a big mistake, you know? And I just there are little there now that you explain now that you explained it, I see it better, right? But in that moment, I was like, man, this is like when chat GPT is like at the end of something, oh, and I'm like sharing an issue that I'm trying to work out. And it's like, you know, if there's anything else that you would like me to do, you know, don't hesitate to uh share that information and I'll be uh happy to map out a workout plan, you know, for your team and tell you how Crawford Park is, you know, like it's like whoa, bro, like stop it. Oh, sorry. Like, I'm not sure. That was incredible. I that I I was so angry at you for downplaying the work of of Dr. Soung, right, and and his work with data, you know, and Lore, his brother, right? And I was like, how dare he? And once you said cloud-based, you uh, as Alanis Morset said, you won me over in spite of me. So uh nice work, sir. Yeah, no, you're you're no, but I I still think that your meaning takes, yeah. Just go back to like Nah, you just go back to like a little snow leopard or whatever, and you're fine, you know? Yeah, you have the disc, man. Yo, I heard by the way that the original voice was actually a Stelgetty from Golden Girls, which would have been like wild, right? Just like a lot of people. It's just like they were both going down a path the other couldn't follow. They just broke each other's hearts, you know, and I understand that, you know. Like I I do I do get that kind of thing. And you know, and you guys, I mean you guys must have said perspective, you know, and you know, from uh from I say perspective as like a point of view, you know, and um we do things see many things here from uh from a certain point of view that um that's a little bit informative, you know. I mean I thought through the lies of the OS, you know, but I mean I'm not sure what often. Oh, I guess, you know, this may be unrelated, but I gotta I gotta speak out. I'm sorry, I gotta speak my you know, truth to power, alright? There is a Fugazi 999 thing being offered at Major League Ballparks, okay? I am very passionate about the authenticity of the 999 challenge, which is nine hot dogs, nine beers, and nine innings, okay? Major league teams, including my beloved near mess, are selling what what New Yorkers and New Jerseyans would call Fugazy. All right, 999, where they give you apparently like one beer to put in like these tiny cups, right? That they they they took the picture in such a way that it looks oh yes, but no, no, they give you nine mini hot dogs and not nine beers. I have not I will your intrepid reporter, Rich, will report back with just that kind of information next episode, ladies and gentlemen. Well, uh just uh uh as we get into that, I just do want to say, guys, we're probably taking a break, and our next project, right, is going to be like two weeks in the future. Right. Uh, you know, uh while you guys are going hanging out with Flowrida, I do uh have to say I I guess I would pick Lost if I had to watch us watch one of them a second time, right? It would uh have to be lost in translation. Uh I would uh never watch her again. It's the the uh guys I went to Catholic school. I can't I can't like I I'm a 43-year-old adult male who I will lie I have to do scroll when something gets a little uncomfortable on the screen for me. Um I I can't do it. So that made me uh I don't even know what to say. Um I can't I get a lot of feelings for her. Okay, so I can't I can't do that again. Alright. So don't um but I I you know look, they were both interesting and thought-provoking. I would definitely though go with lost translation just because if anything, other than not making me feel uh horribly uncomfortable in my own skin, uh I do love the I just love Bill Murray. And even if it's not the type of movie that I like, I absolutely adore him as an actor. I think he's a gem stone.