A couple -- but not under the same roof

New York State now allows gay marriage, but there can be unanticipated consequences -- at least according to Love is Strange, a movie in which John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play a long-established Manhattan couple.

The movie begins when Molina's George and Lithgow's Ben marry after 39 years of living together. Their friends and relatives are overjoyed that the two finally can accomplish what they should long ago have been able to do.

But there's a downside. George works as a music teacher at a Catholic high school that can't abide gay marriage. The school had been willing to overlook George's sexual preferences, but now that he's tied the knot, policy demands that he be dismissed.

This sets up a situation in which the two men face economic pressures that force them to sell their apartment. They come up short on cash, unable to buy (or even rent) another place.

So George and Ben split up for what they hope is a temporary period. George moves in with two gay police officers whose lifestyle runs against his staid grain. His roommates like to party.

Ben takes up residency with a nephew (Darren Burrows) and his wife (Marisa Tomei). He's forced to share a room with the couple's teen-age son (Charlie Tahan), a kid who's none to happy about having a roommate. We feel for Geroge, no one past the age of 60 ever should have to spend a night in a bunk bed.

It seemed to me that on a purely practical level, Ben and George could have found a better solution to their problem. They're offered one living arrangement out of town, but can't abide the thought of leaving New York City.

In pushing the couple apart, director Ira Sachs creates a situation in which the movie's early joy increasingly turns to annoyance.

Ben, in particular, drives Tomei's character a little crazy. She works at home, and has difficulty abiding Ben's constant chatter. Understandably, Ben's teen-age bunkmate would like to have his room back.

Everyone in Love is Strange basically operates out of good will, but cramped living situations can tax anyone's patience.

Molina and Lithgow are entirely believable as a couple that long ago worked out the kinks in their relationship and -- if life were fair -- would be coasting comfortably toward the finish line. George still would be inspiring young people, and Ben would be continuing his career as a painter.

Sachs doesn't drown the story in sentiment, but can't entirely free the narrative of dull spots, as well as a bit of repetition.

Still, George and Ben are genuine enough to keep us interested, as evidenced by the fact that Ben's constant chattering not only taxes the nerves of his nephew's wife, but ours, as well.

In this case, that should be considered a compliment, an attempt to keep the movie from becoming nothing more than a lopsided plea for sympathy.

Tim Burton's short gets longer

A skimpy but often rewarding Frankenweenie

In Frankenweenie, director Tim Burton makes his 1984 short film of the same name longer. Although the result can feel a bit undernourished, Frankenweenie definitely has some splendid moments, many of them a trifle macabre.

Shooting in comforting black and white and skillfully employing the techniques of stop-action animation, Burton tells a story based on familiar horror tropes that he gathers like weird flowers placed into an oddly shaped bouquet.

The story introduces us to Victor Frankenstein (voice by Charlie Tahan), a boy who's having difficulty accepting the loss of his beloved dog Sparky, a happy but hapless pooch that fell victim to an on-coming car.

As it turns out, Victor has an inventive streak, not to mention an attic full of contraptions that look as if they were lifted from the set of any number of low-rent, 50s sci-fi movies.

What's a grieving boy to do? In a Tim Burton movie, he heads to the pet cemetery to dig up poor Sparky, and -- thanks to the revivifying power of lightning -- he reanimates his dearly departed four-legged companion.

Victor learned about the amazing powers of electricity from Mr. Rzykruski (Martin Landau), a substitute science teacher with a slightly ghoulish voice and Transylvanian accent.

To add complexity, Victor and some of his classmates also are competing in their school's science fair. This leads to a wholesale series of reanimations that wreak havoc on the town of New Holland, allowing Burton to bring creature-feature flare to the proceedings.

A giant mutant turtle tramples its way through town in Godzilla-like fashion. A prissy pet cat transforms into a creature that looks like a terrifying cross between a bat and a cat. Sea-monkeys proliferate, creating rampage-like chaos.

All of this because a toothless outcast kid named Edgar 'E' Gore (Atticus Shaffer) connives to use Victor's secrets to his own advantage, pointing the way toward one of the movie's more didactically expressed lessons.

Pay attention here, kids: Whether science is used for good or ill depends on who's doing the using.

Additional voices include Martin Short and Catherine O'Hara as Victor's mom and dad. Winona Ryder voices a girl who's staying with her uncle the mayor, who lives next door to Victor and frets about dogs that trample his flowers.

Burton knows how to create visual magic, and he's proven himself adept at playing with pop culture in ways that are clever and sometimes darkly funny. In this case, he's recycling the conceits of 1930s Frankenstein movies, right down to the bolts in Sparky's neck. They're used to attract the electric current that brings the poor pooch back to life.

My only real complaint about Frankenweenie involves its ending. For a time, I thought that Burton was going to have some fun and then show us how a child can come to grips with a devastating loss, but the movie's ending cops out on a difficult truth and keeps Frankenweenie from saying something that really could have been helpful to kids.

Parents should know that kids who have a less offbeat sense of humor than Burton may find the movie a bit disturbing. I appreciated the stylishness of Frankenweenie, and give Burton credit for being interested in the kind of antique horror that can seem almost quaint -- at least in these days of graphically splashed violence and gore.

If I really were going to push another point, I might say that it's past time for Burton to stop trying to reanimate the playthings he finds in his pop-cultural toy chest. But I'll leave that for another day.