SOFIA COPPOLA 

Sofia Coppola is an astonishingly talented young director. Granted she has great bloodlines- her father Francis (The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now) won five directorial Oscars. Sofia is only 50. She made her directorial debut at 28. Her first seven movies are uniformly good, unusual, and different from each other.

The Virgin Suicides (1999) is unusual to the point of weirdness, but intriguing and expertly done. James Woods and Kathleen Turner are the beleaguered parents of the five beautiful Lisbon sisters. Their attempts at protecting the girls is way over the top, as is the reaction of the daughters. Based on a Jeremy Eugenides novel, it leaves the friends of the girls, their parents (and us) wondering what went wrong.

Her first effort’s success (and the Coppola name) enabled her to sign up A-list actors Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson for Lost In Translation (2003). Ms. Coppola won an Oscar for the screenplay about an aging actor (Mr. Murray) trying to get it back together in Tokyo. He is in Japan to film a TV commercial for which he will be paid a bundle. He encounters Ms. Johansson in the hotel and an interesting, platonic friendship develops as they discuss Japan, America and the differences in people of their respective generations. 

Marie Antoinette (2006) stars Kirsten Dunst in Ms. Coppola’s affectionate and sympathetic,  if biographically questionable, story of the girl-queen of France. Married to the very strange Louis XVI when she was only 14, she is ripped from her friends and family in her native Austria. Her extravagance and thumbing her nose at French mores do not endear her to the locals in court or in the countryside. The revolution is upon the royals as the movie ends. 

In Somewhere (2010) Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, a movie actor who seems to have everything yet is beset by depression and lethargy. His libertine lifestyle is gradually changed by the presence of his 11-year-old daughter, Cleo, played by an amazingly good Elle Fanning. 

The Bling Ring (2013)  is the story of a gang of Hollywood teenagers whose lives revolve around robbing the homes of absent celebrities. Ms. Coppola’s portrayal of these vapid young women is both eye-popping and sad. The actors are all unknowns except Emma Watson from the Harry Potter films. 

The Beguiled (2017) is another Coppola outlier. Colin Farrel plays a wounded Union soldier who is taken in by the residents of an all-girls school in Virginia. As each of the girls (including Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning and Kirstin Dunst) react to the handsome stranger, things get very sticky. The ending will astonish. The 1971 version of this same story, with Clint Eastwood as the soldier, is also quite good. 

Ms. Coppola’s most recent release stars Bill Murray, one of her favorite actors, as the urbane father of straight arrow Rashida Jones. She worries that her husband is cheating. Her dad is convinced that he is and wants to help her catch him. On The Rocks (2020) is fun and ultimately surprising. 

All of the movies in this column are available on DVD. All are for grown-ups.