Marielle Heller makes many bold choices. The use of the miniatures for the establishing shots and transitions is wildly imaginative. Tom Hanks is absolutely perfect but unfortunately I was not as enamored with the rest of the cast.

I try to see films on the big screen but it's not always possible. So I watched this on a screener link.

therapy: expensive

tom hanks as mr rogers breaking the forth wall asking how you deal with anger: free (or the cost of a cinema ticket )

There's a moment in this where Tom Hanks/Mr. Rogers looks right at the camera and into your soul for a solid 20 seconds, and it's simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, as if maybe this is the last thing you'll ever see. Rest of the movie is pretty good too.

Heller’s filmmaking is so warm and inviting. She has the ability to take character’s who on the surface feel like supporting characters in real life and makes them protagonists (obviously referring to Llyod, not Mr. Rogers.) That said, while she held my attention with his character, the performance from Matthew Rhys felt pretty cartoonish and stereotypical. Same with Chris Cooper, he didn’t really feel believable till the last 20 minutes. The editing was interesting and I appreciate the stylistic choices that were made but in some ways it threw off the structure. But back to Heller, her slow patient style worked insanely well with an award-worthy performance from Hanks (still team Dafoe, don’t worry.) Can’t wait to see what she does next.

Marielle Heller is for real

Saw this a couple days ago and can't stop thinking about how even though Tom Hanks doesn't look or sound much like Mr. Rogers, he irradiates the exact right sort of decency where I instantly believe it's him. What a nice guy.

Warm

Reason to watch: Tom Hanks. Everything with his Mr. Rogers here is good to great. But do yourself a huge favor and watch the great documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” first. It will help this film a good deal.

Reason to not: Sadly everything without Hanks is pretty low rent tv soapy melodrama done quite poorly.

L'ossessione di recuperare tutti i titoli candidati agli oscar nelle più svariate categorie, comporta quasi sempre un dondolamento testicolare per un buon 50% degli stessi.
Però quando arriva qualche piccola sorpresina come questa, ritorna la forza nel proseguire per portare a compimento la tua impresa malata.

The thing that makes this movie work, the thing that makes it something special, is that it’s not a biopic. Instead, Heller and company opted to make a film that is representative of the ethos of the man, and how Rogers’ attitude and message touched people’s lives.

There’s no shocking revelations or seediness to discover, Rogers is presented as a monolith to goodness – and rather than feeling grating and obnoxiously precious because of the sincere performances and the fact that they just go all-in on the saccharine tone, it just works. I’m actually surprised at how well this comes together.

A pleasantly warm experience. Like the man himself, the film seems simple and nice on the surface, but reveals more complicated layers of the philosophy of that niceness the more you look. Very beautiful, smart presentation by Marielle Heller.

Interesting direction and two very good turns from Rhys and Hanks. Not quite enough to be something I'd like to see again, but worthwhile.

Film twitter is very vocal about lack of nominations for female directors,which is absolutely correct.But the problem is they only care about nominations for female directors only when Greta Gerwig has a new movie out. I am also going to do that from now,but for Marielle Heller. She was criminally underrecognized for last year's sublime film, "Can you ever forgive me?" & she is criminally underrecognized this yr for this gem,which tells the oft repeated story of an American icon in a wholly original way. Her directorial choices make this movie come alive. The subway singing scene is a joy to behold. Can't wait to see what she does next.

I feel like this movie was under appreciated. I was enamored with Matthew Rhys's performance as Lloyd Vogel and Hanks did an admirable job of not trying to impersonate Fred Rogers and instead showcase the man's compassion. I appreciated this micro story and felt it was one of the better dramas of 2019.

Zzzzzzzz.