A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Director: Marielle Heller

Having portrayed a real-life figure (the literary hoaxer, Lee Israel) as one of the most obnoxious you could meet in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Marielle Heller has gone precisely the opposite way in her latest. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is partially a tribute to Fred “Mister” Rogers, a children’s television host and Protestant pastor who was beloved in the United States from the late 1960s to the early twenty-first century (though most on this side of the Atlantic have never heard of him). 

Attired in non-threatening cardies and speaking in a slow, kindly voice, Mister Rogers comes across as America’s Nicest Man. He’s played by America’s Second Nicest Man, Tom Hanks – which is quite a lot of Niceness to handle. To the TV studio comes a journalist, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), on a reluctant commission to interview him for Esquire. Lloyd is fresh from a punch-up with his dad (Chris Cooper), a drunk who years ago abandoned the family after mum fell ill with cancer.