Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (2019) reportedly moves TIFF to tears

Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) was a cause for nostalgic audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival to exit the theater with tears in their eyes and stories about Mister Rogers on their lips, according to The Daily Beast. Reviewer Richard Porton reports that Heller uses a pessimistic journalist named Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a fictionalized representation for the 1998 Fred Rogers profiler Tom Junod of Esquire, to balance the Rogers biopic with more nuance. Porton dismisses this attempt, writing that the movie still canonizes Rogers’s character, but praises Tom Hanks’s performance as the television host.

Author: Hunter Goddard, MA, BA

I am an award-winning journalist, memoirist, and personal essayist in Denver, Colorado. I hold a Master of Arts in Professional Creative Writing with a concentration in Nonfiction from the University of Denver, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Communication from Colorado State University Fort Collins, with a concentration in Publications Writing, Editing, and Production, and an interdisciplinary minor in Film Studies. I am passionate about inspiring positive change and meaningful action through the power of the literary arts. View all posts by Hunter Goddard, MA, BA