Documentary tells the engaging story of a pair of Japanese artists and the life they have made for themselves in Brooklyn
CUTIE AND THE BOXER (Zachary Heinzerling, 2013)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, August 16
www.facebook.com/cutieandtheboxer
Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer is a beautifully told story of love and art and the many sacrifices one must make to try to succeed in both. In 1969, controversial Japanese Neo Dada action painter and sculptor Ushio Shinohara came to New York City, looking to expand his career. According to the catalog for the recent MoMA show “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde,” which featured four works by Ushio, “American art had seemed to him to be ‘marching toward the glorious prairie of the rainbow and oasis of the future, carrying all the world’s expectations of modern painting.’” Four years later, he met nineteen-year-old Noriko, who had left Japan to become an artist in New York as well. The two fell in love and have been together ever since, immersed in a fascinating relationship that Heinzerling explores over a five-year period in his splendid feature-length theatrical debut. Ushio and Noriko live in a cramped apartment and studio in DUMBO, where he puts on boxing gloves, dips them in paint, and pounds away at large, rectangular canvases and builds oversized motorcycle sculptures out of found materials. Meanwhile, Noriko, who has spent most of the last forty years taking care of her often childlike husband and staying with him through some rowdy times and battles with the bottle, is finally creating her own work, an R. Crumb-like series of drawings detailing the life of her alter ego, Cutie, and her often cruel husband, Bullie. (“Ushi” means “bull” in Japanese.) While Ushio is more forthcoming verbally in the film, mugging for the camera and speaking his mind, the pig-tailed Noriko is far more tentative, so director and cinematographer Heinzerling brings her tale to life by animating her work, her characters jumping off the page to show Cutie’s constant frustration with Bullie.
Ushio Shinohara creates one of his action paintings in CUTIE AND THE BOXER
During the course of the too-short eighty-two-minute film — it would have been great to spend even more time with these unique and compelling figures — the audience is introduced to the couple’s forty-year-old son, who has some issues of his own; Guggenheim senior curator of Asian Art Alexandra Munroe, who stops by the studio to consider purchasing one of Ushio’s boxing paintings for the museum; and Chelsea gallery owner Ethan Cohen, who represents Ushio. But things never quite take off for Ushio, who seems to always be right on the cusp of making it. Instead, the couple struggles to pay their rent. One of the funniest, yet somehow tragic, scenes in the film involves Ushio packing up some of his sculptures — forcing them into a suitcase like clothing — and heading back to Japan to try to sell some pieces. Cutie and the Boxer is a special documentary that gets to the heart of the creative process as it applies both to art and love, focusing on two disparate people who have made a strange yet thoroughly charming life for themselves. Cutie and the Boxer opens August 16 at Lincoln Plaza and the Landmark Sunshine; Ushio and Noriko will be at the latter for several Q&As over the weekend, including some with Heinzerling as well.
Alan Arkin’s directorial debut is a hysterically absurdist foray into the urban paranoia that haunted a lawless New York City in the late 1960s and 1970s. Based on Jules Feiffer’s first play, which was a Broadway flop in 1969 but became a hit in London and off Broadway, Little Murders centers on the offbeat relationship between the determined and domineering Patsy Newquist (Marcia Rodd) and the calm, easygoing Alfred Chamberlain (Elliott Gould). They first meet when Patsy tries to save him from getting beaten up yet again by a group of thugs, but he doesn’t want any help; he never fights back, instead letting them tire themselves out. A former successful commercial photographer, Alfred now spends his time taking artistic pictures of feces he finds on the filthy streets. He and Patsy sort of start dating, but Alfred, who regularly says, “I don’t know what love is,” is too passive for Patsy, who makes it her project to mold him into a stronger man, as if he were one of her interior design projects. The black comedy reaches new heights when Alfred meets Patsy’s rather eccentric family, played by the three actors who originated the roles on the stage. Vincent Gardenia is her high-strung father who laments what has become of the city, Elizabeth Wilson is her prim and proper mother who only sees what she wants to see, and Jon Korkes is deliciously funny as her crazy brother, who finds humor in just about everything. Meanwhile, wherever Patsy goes, a heavy-breathing phone caller follows.
Originally announced to be the fourth Spider-Man movie in the franchise restarted in 2002 by Sam Raimi that featured Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson, The Amazing Spider-Man instead goes back to the beginning, telling a different origin story that mixes elements of various issues of the immensely popular comic book hero. The first third of the new film works extremely well, as Peter (Tony-nominated British actor Andrew Garfield) falls for beautiful blonde Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), is bitten by a radioactive spider developed by the one-armed Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), and learns how to use his new strength to battle high school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) while having difficulty explaining himself to Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field), who raised him after his parents’ disappearance. It’s even directed by a man named Webb, as if it was all meant to be. But soon Marc Webb, a longtime video director whose breakthrough was 2009’s (500) Days of Summer, lets things get way out of hand as the film devolves faster than you can say “With great power comes great responsibility” (which nobody actually says in this film), with gaping plot holes so big you can drive a New York City crane through them — and when the cranes do in fact show up, they elicit well-deserved groans from the audience. The Amazing Spider-Man works best when Garfield and Stone are on-screen together, their blossoming romance building slowly but elegantly, perhaps representative of real life, as they became one of Hollywood’s hottest couples while making the film. But as Connors transforms into the Lizard, The Amazing Spider-Man loses its focus, turning into yet another CGI-crazed monster movie with silly plot twists, annoying red herrings, and ridiculous segments. (Just what’s up with that antidote, and why do villains always build self-destruct machines that have to count down really loudly?) Even the 3D that worked so well in the beginning seems to have been forgotten in the second half. This reboot deserves a swift boot in the you-know-what, especially given the promise of its opening scenes. The Amazing Spider-Man, is screening August 14 as part of the South Street Seaport’s “Front/Row” “See/Change” series, which continues August 17 with Chicago and August 21 with Back to the Future. For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go 
Peter Jackson continues Tolkien’s immortal tale as Frodo (Elijah Wood) is off to see the wizard (Christopher Lee) at Mordor, where he can destroy evil by throwing the Ring into a fiery volcano. In addition to loyal Samwise (Sean Astin), Frodo is joined by a creature called Gollum (Andy Serkis), which is what you come up with when you mix Yoda with Steve Buscemi. Throw in a bunch of Ents and Orcs, the kingdoms of Rohan and Gondor, and lots of great music and special effects and you have a three-hour film — which earned six more Oscar nods, winning two (Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects) — that surpasses the first part and will leave you unwilling to wait another whole year for the conclusion.
