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Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “They Shot the Piano Player,” an animated epic written and co-directed by Fernando Trueba that combines the Bossa Nova sound, a music reporter and a mystery about a long lost pianist. Currently in select theaters. See local listings.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Jeff Goldblum voices the real-life Jeff Harris, a music journalist who goes to Argentina to research a book on the Bossa Nova sound, which was a worldwide sensation in the 1960s and ‘70s, only to be repressed by a dictatorship in Argentina that began in 1974. Swept up in that coup was the pianist Tenorio Jr., a major force both in Bossa Nova and his own unique approach to the instrument. In Harris’ research, Tenorio’s name comes up again and again, to the point where the journalist’s new mission is to solve the mystery of the piano player’s disappearance.

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,...

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• Brazil Film News: Local Scene A new record Brazilian cinema has just witnessed the rise of a new phenomenon at the movie theaters. The movie in question is called “Se eu fosse voce 2” (“If I were you 2”), a sequel for the 2006’s already big hit “Se eu fosse voce”. The achievement. The film became, in only its first few weeks of release, the biggest Brazilian box-office since its rebirth in 1995. A few weeks later, a new impressive record has been set: based on the profits made through theater exhibitions, it managed to enter the top 5 in history (along with the three “Spider-man” franchises and “Titanic”). The numbers gain are that much more impressive due to the poor performances at that the Brazilian box office last year (one of the worst since 95). The Story Like the first film, this second part is about the couple Claudio (Tony Ramos) and Helena (Gloria Pires) who,

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