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Stunning animation highlights the vibrant world of samba jazz and the tragic disappearance of Francisco Tenório Júnior. Trueba and Mariscal misstep with the addition of a distracting fictional journalist, Jeff Harris, in an otherwise compelling narrative. The film sheds light on the political turmoil of Argentina's military junta and the atrocities committed during the "Dirty War" era.

They Shot the Piano Player is a fictional, animated docudrama about the tragic disappearance of Francisco Tenório Júnior. The virtuoso Brazilian pianist was instrumental in popularizing samba jazz, specifically bossa nova and its alternating beat structure, which became a late 50s and 60s global phenomenon. Tenório Jr. vanished the night of March 18, 1976, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after leaving his hotel to run an errand. Spanish filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal chronicle his musical legacy and murder at the hands of complicit dictatorial regimes. Their methodology is undoubtedly creative despite a flawed approach.

Taking a cue from the genre-melding impulse of the music at its heart, They Shot the Piano Player initially gives every appearance of being pure fiction. The plot of this animated film by Spanish directors Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba follows Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum), a journalist from New York City who’s been commissioned to write a book on bossa nova. Immersing himself in the music in preparation for a trip to Rio de Janeiro, he hears a solo by Brazilian jazz pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. and gets sidetracked. The innovator of samba jazz, it turns out, disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Buenos Aires just before the 1976 military coup, and Jeff decides to fill in the blanks.

The setup, then, has all the trappings of a detective story, with an amateur sleuth in obsessive pursuit of an unsolved mystery. In Rio, Jeff’s friend João (Tony Ramos...

Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal tackle a tricky balancing act in their new feature, celebrating the intoxicating lilt of the bossa nova and also investigating the devastating brutality of state terrorism. It’s a testament to their talent as filmmakers that, for the most part, they manage to pull it off.

They Shot the Piano Player centers on a kind of ghost: Francisco Tenório Júnior, a leading light of the thriving Brazilian music scene of the 1960s and ’70s who went missing in 1976, while on tour in Buenos Aires. How this keyboard virtuoso, by all accounts a gentle soul with no political ax to grind, became one of the desaparecidos targeted by Argentina’s oppressive regime is the puzzle that drives the movie.

Structured as a journalist’s search for answers, They Shot the Piano Player combines a fictional framing device with documentary material gathered by Trueba over a period of about 15 years,...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in select theaters on Friday, November 24, with a nationwide rollout to follow in early 2024.

The one thing you can’t accuse “They Shot the Piano Player” of is talking down to its audience. Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s animated documentary about the 1976 disappearance of pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. demands your absolute attention with its encyclopedic index of talking heads, and pretty much requires you to have substantial existing knowledge of bossa nova and the South American geopolitics of the 1960s and ’70s. Woe to those who do not. The result is an aggravating missed opportunity to tell a story that absolutely needs to be told to an audience that needs to hear it.

Trueba is a legendary director in Spain. Those who don’t know him for his 1992 Academy...

Of all the ‘depressed relationship’ dramas of the early ’70s, this may be the most rewarding. It also sports one of the longest titles on record. Paul Zindel’s award-winning play gets a marvelous adaptation for the screen, thanks to Alvin Sargent, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. There’s also the stealth input of the star couple’s daughter Nell Potts, whose restrained performance is the happy opposite of mawkish and maudlin.

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Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date February 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Joanne Woodward, Nell Potts, Roberta Wallach, Judith Lowry, David Spielberg, Richard Venture, Jess Osuna, Will Hare.

Cinematography: Adam Holender

Film Editor: Evan A. Lottman, Craig McKay, assistant

Original Music: Maurice Jarre

Written by Alvin Sargent from the play by Paul Zindel

Produced and Directed by Paul Newman

The late-’60s freedom of...

Joanne Woodward on TCM: Rachel, Rachel; Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Count Three And Pray (1955) A Westerner turns preacher to overcome his shady past. Dir: George Sherman. Cast: Van Heflin, Joanne Woodward, Phil Carey. C-102 mins. 7:45 Am Rally Round The Flag, Boys! (1958) The arrival of an Army missile base shatters the peaceful life of a suburban town. Dir: Leo McCarey. Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Collins. C-107 mins, Letterbox Format. 9:45 Am Paris Blues (1961) Two jazz musicians deal with romantic problems in Paris. Dir: Martin Ritt. Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier. C-99 mins, Letterbox Format. 11:30 Am Signpost To Murder (1964) A convicted murderer, who escaped from a mental institution, hides out in the home of a woman whose husband is missing. Dir: George Englund. Cast: Joanne Woodward, Stuart Whitman, Edward Mulhare. Bw-77 mins, Letterbox Format. 1:00 Pm...

Chicago – In our latest drama edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 15 admit-two passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of the new film “Rabbit Hole” with Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest.

“Rabbit Hole” also features Sandra Oh, Miles Teller, Tammy Blanchard, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Tenney, Stephen Mailer, Mike Doyle, Roberta Wallach, Patricia Kalember, Ali Marsh, Yetta Gottesman and Colin Mitchell from director John Cameron Mitchell and writer David Lindsay-Abaire. The film, which opens in Chicago on Dec. 25, 2010, is produced by OddLot Entertainment and one of the producers is Chicagoan Gigi Pritzker.

To win your free pass to the advance Chicago screening of “Rabbit Hole” courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, just answer our question below. That’s it! This screening is on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010 at 7 p.m. in downtown Chicago. Directions to enter this Hookup and immediately win can be found beneath the graphic below.

The...