I've been going to the movies a lot lately, trying to get caught up with a backlog of films I was eager to see.

Last weekend I saw the fine and funny and affecting "Lost in Translation." In this Hollywood era of slam-bang spectacle, stick-figure characters and duh-duh-duh predictability, Sofia Coppola's movie, about a couple of American strangers who meet in Tokyo, is stunningly singular.

[FILM CLIP: LOST IN TRANSLATION]

Bill Murray is only a few years older than I am, and his character's bemused, watchful midlife angst feels both familiar and authentic.

But his co-star gives a remarkably appealing and authentic-seeming performance as well: Scarlett Johansson is only 18 years old.

[FILM CLIP: LOST IN TRANSLATION]

As my 15-year-old daughter and I were leaving the theater, trying to figure out, in that first giddy post-good-movie moment, exactly how much and why we liked "Lost in Translation," I realized that my recent moviegoing spree had been an unusually satisfying one. And I realized that all the very different films I've seen these last couple of weeks had one thing in common: they're all about girls struggling to become young women, and they all star fresh young actresses of real quality.

In Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen, Evan Rachel Wood is riveting as a sweet girl suddenly hell-bent on joining the over-MTV'd fast crowd. Her makeover from cute stuffed-animal collector into sexy mall-rat nihilist feels nauseatingly plausible.

[FILM CLIP: THIRTEEN]

In Ridley Scott's caper movie Matchstick Men, about a con-man who takes on his long-lost daughter as an apprentice, the extraordinary young actress is named Alison Lohman.

[FILM CLIP: MATCHSTICK MEN]

Her performance is frankly all the more remarkable because while she convincingly plays a 14 year old in the movie, Lohman is actually an adult - I was astonished to discover that she just turned 24.

And in Niki Caro's tough, lovely film Whale Rider, about the decline and redemption of a Maori town in rural New Zealand, Keisha Castle-Hughes' is the star. And her performance, as a kind of 12-year-old messiah, is in some ways the most awesome of all.

[FILM CLIP: WHALE RIDER]

She's not just very young, she is the heroine, on screen most of the time. And she had never acted before in her life.

Exactly what is one to make of this sudden cohort of phenomenal young film actresses? Maybe it's a happy coincidence, but maybe not just that. Three of these four movies were low-budget independent productions, the kinds of movies where success depends almost entirely on sheer talent. And two of the films were directed by women. As the father of two strong, wise, quirky, preternaturally interesting girls, I'm thinking: maybe all these fine young actresses emerging at once right now portends some kind of post- feminist generation-Z efflorescence.

In any case, go to your local megaplex and see for yourself, as I did, that George Bernard Shaw isn't right 100 percent of the time: in movies right now, youth is not wasted on the young.

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