A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

  Okay, so I tried to watch The Suspect but got thrown off by the shitty editing.  Then I tried to watch 20th Century Women but only made it 28 minutes.  I tried to watch The Newsroom but couldn't make it through the pilot.  A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood took me two days, but that's because I just bought a house and my attention has been, shall we say, divided.

Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is an investigative journalist for Esquire magazine known for his exposés.  He has garnered a reputation for hit pieces so his editor (Christine Lahti) assigns him a puff piece on Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) for the magazine's heroes feature to tone down his image.  Initially accepting with bad grace, Lloyd finds himself confronted with the genuine humility, grace, and compassion of the beloved children's TV host which forces him to confront his resentment of his father (Chris Cooper) before it wrecks the relationship he has with his own son.

Tom Hanks doesn't look anything like Mr. Rogers but damned if he didn't nail that character.  The mannerisms, the voice cadence, the general spirit -- all perfect.  That's why all the critics made a big deal out of his performance.  But he is actually not the main character of the movie and the focus on him actually detracts from the film itself.  Tom Hanks doesn't "make" this movie.  The movie makes itself.

There is an astonishing level of detail that evokes the PBS show most of us remember from our childhoods.  I didn't even watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood a lot as a kid and I was stunned at how visceral a reaction I had to the models, the puppets, and even the grainy 70s-esque public television filming which leads up to a truly disturbing hallucination Lloyd has about 2/3 of the way through about being trapped in the puppet kingdom.  It is meticulously set up and executed flawlessly.  I've not seen Matthew Rhys in many things (his teeth bother me) but he is very good here.

It's currently streaming on Starz, which I get through Amazon Prime, if you are interested in a mostly soothing movie about dealing with life's hardships.  It's been that kind of year, frankly.