Anne Thompson. Last January, Sundance executive director Keri Putnam sternly ordered me to see the movie. After that, forget about it. Outside the U. Do we make films to make each other feel good, pat each other on the back, preach to the converted, or argue with the converted?
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Tom Hanks channels Mister Rogers in a drama about how the legendary children's TV host saves a magazine writer, and maybe the rest of us. By Owen Gleiberman. Chief Film Critic. I wondered if Hanks would be gentle enough to play Fred Rogers. He makes you believe in this too-nice-for-words man who is all about believing. It was cracking open his darkness, letting the sunshine in. As in: love your children, love thy neighbor, love yourself. Yet from everything we can see, he is more or less living the life.
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Won't You Be My Neighbor? The trailer for the film debuted on what would have been Rogers's 90th birthday, March 20, It was nominated for numerous awards, won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature , and was chosen by Time magazine as one of its top ten films of Filmmaker Morgan Neville examines the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, the beloved host of the popular children's television program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It had a limited release in US theaters on June 15, In November , Morgan revealed that the original title of the film was The Radical Mister Rogers , but after the election of Donald Trump , the term "radical" had a negative connotation according to Morgan.
See our picks. Charmingly soft-spoken and yet powerfully incisive expressing his profound ideals, Fred Rogers was a unique presence on television for generations. Through interviews of his family and colleagues, the life of this would-be pastor is explored as a man who found a more important calling to provide an oasis for children in a video sea of violent bombardment. That proved to be his landmark series, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood , a show that could gently delve into important subjects no other children's show would have dared for that time.
