Cutie and the Boxer

2013 Directed by Zachary Heinzerling

This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role as her overbearing husband's assistant, Noriko finds an identity of her own.

Noriko Shinohara Ushio Shinohara

81 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Adam Cook ★★★½ 7

Well this isn’t what I was expecting. I had wrongly assumed Cutie and the Boxer would be a documentary about a 40-year love story between two ageing artists in New York. Instead it was a film filled with bitterness and resentment as the eponymous Cutie experiences a life of frustration as she lives in the shadow of her alcoholic and poor husband.
Zachary Heinzerling’s candid documentary explores the frequently difficult relationship between action painter and sculptor, Ushio Shinohara (the Boxer), and his wife, Noriko (Cutie). Now in their twilight years the pair struggle to make a living via Ushio’s art. Achieving success in his early career the boxing painter is now finds his work harder to sell. Noriko, having supported…
Review by Jonathan White ★★ 11

I have written and deleted thousands of words on Cutie and the Boxer. I didn’t like it, and I’ve been struggling to reason why.
The documentary has morphed into a weird creature these days. When we have the likes of Banksy and Moore playing in the space, the borders of what’s a documentary and what’s a narrative are getting kinda fuzzy. Moore is blatantly pushing his own agenda, but doing it in a quite entertaining way, and Banksy is simply fucking with us; as he’s known to do. I don’t have a problem with either of them calling their work documentaries. Why? I can see what they’re trying to do a mile away. They practically wear ‘I’m deceiving you’ t-shirts.…
Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★★½ 11

As another summer is frozen into our minds assisted by the coming winter chills, it marks yet another year of two hour plus padded-out blockbusters that will fade away with little to remember. Super improved, more expensive and extra large, these films feel like a TV commercial selling you a product you had no intention of purchasing but the constant repetitive barrage subdued us into submission. So it's a bit of a joke to believe you could you possibly squeeze something worthwhile into a puny 82 minutes, right? Zachary Heinzerling, director of Cutie and the Boxer, offers the perfect counter argument.
He has documented a complicated, fascinating study on marriage, love, old age, parenthood, artistic struggle and personal evolution. Focusing…
Review by Lise ★★½ 19

I once knew a genius.
He certainly thought he was a genius.
I suppose I did too for a while there.
The problem with thinking you are a genius is that it is a pretty difficult position to hold without also being a dick. See, when you think you are a genius you think you are above everyone else, and everyone else should realize your greatness. Others should do everything they can for you because everyone's goal in life should always be to ensure that a genius fulfills his potential. Every minute that the genius isn't being a genius is a minute wasted. So anyone living with a genius ought to cook for them, clean up after them, provide for…
Review by russman ★★★½

Ushio should be Mayweather's next opponent
Review by davidehrlich ★★★½ 1

definitely could have used some more meat on them there bones (it clocks in at 82 minutes and just shy of greatness), this well-observed documentary on the amazing marriage between two ex-pat Japanese artists living in DUMBO is a resonant portrait of the exchange between art and life, and how a work's true value is never measured on the open market. ...even though i now want to buy a Shinohara boxer painting. or maybe i just want to be able to *afford* a Shinohara painting. or have the kind of apartment that could display it properly. or...
Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★½

Cutie hates Bullie?
-Ushio Shinohara
I was expecting a charming documentary about a charismatic and outrageous couple, but ended up with one of the most honest looks at long term relationships I've ever seen. Sweet and painful all at once. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I believe that there are probably more 30-40 year relationships like this one then not.
The couple's very existence is solely dependent on one's sacrifice throughout their lives while the other acts obliviously selfish and takes more from their lives together then they give. To an outsider the relationship is beyond comprehension like the one of Cutie and Bullie, but I think they both actually love each other, it's just often times love makes little to no sense. Director Zachary Heinzerling does a great job of presenting us more with their relationship then their story as a piece of art just like the lives they lead.
Review by Rod Sedgwick ★★★½ 1

''You see... We are the ones suffering the most from art...''
Noriko and Ushio Shinohara have been married 40 years, live in New York as struggling artists, and in Cutie and the Boxer, their idiosyncratic routine is on full display. But there is a change in the air when Noriko the ever subservient wife decides she is tired of living in her husbands shadow and begins to exhibit her own artistic expressions. The thrust of this observation is a microcosmic display of human relationships; the love and devotion of a wife who dutifully serves but dies a little inside everyday, the husband that selfishly devotes himself to his creative process as if it were the complete essence of life itself,…
Review by Joe Bender ★★★★

One of this year's nominees for Best Documentary, Cutie and the Boxer is an interesting film about the relationship between painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko. Through animated flashbacks (painted by Noriko) we see their story and why she has become unhappy after all these years together. I found it to be a very engaging documentary.
Review by TJ Peloquin ★★★ 2

After the Oscar nominees were announced I realized that 4 of the 5 "Best Documentary" nominees were currently streaming on Netflix. Thus, my quest began with "Cutie and the Boxer".
This film is an interesting portrayal of a marriage between two artists, Ushio and Noriko Shinohara. Despite fame and recognition, they still struggle to pay the rent to their apartment in New York City. They say that everything they do, is for art's sake. This picture depicts the ups and downs of their 40 year marriage and the partnership they have shared for all of those years.
It was a compelling portrait of artistic integrity and a reflection on the love that these two shared for art and for each…
Review by MrTaylor ★★★★

80 year old Bullie says Spielberg's best is Jaws and the last Indiana Jones sucked...this guy is alright in my book.
At his age, punching away at his method of painting is fascinating and encouraging to any aging artist. Director Zachary Heinzerling chooses the right amount of Cuties animation and Bullie's antics to open our eyes to a lessor seen kind of romance.
Once he and Cutie had moderate fame and acclaim but booze and life can hinder even the brightest minds and the most motivated. Underneath all the painted cardboard and cartoon characters, we see these people are living in the same world of fallen dreams with countless other souls sold short. Sculptures gather dust and colors fade. Nothing…
Review by Andy Ferguson ★★★★½

If it were not for the enormously brilliant The Act of Killing being released the same year, Cutie and the Boxer would have taken the prize for my favorite documentary of 2013. Fiction, non-fiction, or otherwise, this is one of the more genuine and unexpectedly moving love stories I've seen in a long time.
Straight from the opening titles, which are accompanied by one of the most sublime and unique original scores in film all year, it's clear that director Zachary Heinzerling is going to do his subject's justice and make a documentary not among the norm, which is exactly not what these two artists' relationship has ever been or will ever be. I had no knowledge beforehand of the…

Recent reviews

Review by Jukka Kuva ★★★★

Cutie and the Boxer is an Oscar nominated documentary about the long and tumultous marriage of famous boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko, who tries to break free of the role of an assistant and build an identity of her own. It's a very artistic documentary about two quite interesting artists and succeeds quite well in what it does. The interesting couple is looked at with decent depth and the movie itself is very well done. I especially liked both credit sequences but all of it is good and it doesn't have time to get even slightly boring during the 81 minute runtime.
Recommended.
Review by salsk ★★★★

Watched this during a spree of watching documentaries about artists (Abstract: the Art of Design facilitating this). Cutie and her melancholy stood out in that spree but I am not sure if the whole story did.
Would have loved a bit more Boxer and why he is the way he is, but its not about him and at the end of the day, that's fine too.
Review by tom ★★★½

far more of an emotional journey than i was prepared for.
home, netflix
Review by henry stink

no thanks to cutsey animation sequences but yes pls to cuties nice work that was the source material for them
Review by Beegles ★★★½

If only this had turned out like Gone Girl.
Review by PhillyFilmFan ★★★½

About marriage, disappointment, struggle, and some success in the lives of two artists. Highly recommend.
Review by vhs_vampire ★★★★

Very cool
Review by ASaldanha ★★★★★

Um dos documentários que mais me marcou nessa vida.
Review by Dio_of_Kynikos ★★★½

This was unexpectedly sad. The family dynamics gave me some cringes. The life of the artist isn't easy. Then again, neither is living in New York. What surprised me the most was that people would pay money for the artwork shown in the documentary. I wouldn't want all my retirement eggs resting in that niche basket.
Review by fabzzz99 ★★★★★

Beyond just analyzing their relationship, every little droplet about art as a subject was beautiful. I don't think there's ever been an art documentary that really talks about the difficult sides of art and love than this one. Other documentaries or biopics feel almost opera-ized when they go over the woe an artist feels and the artists thoughts dramatized explaining a stream of consciousness of art that doesn't really make sense.
Cutie and the Boxer strips the myth of both the artist and love to show you a portrait even more real and messy; one we live.
Love is a ROAR
Review by vanslater ★★★★

I caught this on Netflix
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Review by Tyler ★★★★

Watching Cutie and the Boxer was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a documentary about art, but it is actually about a two struggling Japanese artists living in Brooklyn. It's about a man who has never appreciated his wife. Noriko has lived in her husband's shadow for her entire adult life (nearly 40 years) and she resents him. Ushio is painted in a particularly negative light and I feel like the documentary is missing Ushio's reckoning. I find it interesting that he permitted the documentary to be made, given his documented belittling of Noriko's art, which is objectively wonderful and makes for delightful animations in the movie used as a storytelling device. Wikipedia suggests that he is still alive, so I don't think it was released posthumously. Then he how did he finally come around?