Warm Springs

Fairly standard back-story-of-a-great-man biopic, though rather more relentlessly uplifting than most. Interestingly, Bill Murray made a far more compelling FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson. Cynthia Nixon was fun to watch as Eleanor, and Kathy Bates transcended her rather pedestrian role, as she so often does, by dint of sheer excellence of craft.

Solid and respectful telling of Roosevelt's struggles when diagnosed with Polio; while the story is interesting and inspiring, the idea to make it into a movie seems to have been a miscalculation, as substance to the material never seems to be there, and feels stretched and padded to fill a 2 hour running time. Branagh is fine, if never quite convincing as FDR, while Nixon perhaps surprisingly fares much better as Eleanor.