Christopher Robin (2018)

One can well be forgiven for mixing this up with Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017). It even includes the latter's titular phrase more than once. But this Disney feature concerns only the fictional authority figure of the 100 Aker Wood, not the real-life son of author A.A. Milne.

Christopher leaves his stuffed animal friends behind when he goes to boarding -- or, as they would put it, "boring" -- school. After a whirlwind tour of his life thereafter, we find him (now played by Ewan McGregor) an efficiency manager with ironically little time for non-work, much to the displeasure of his wife (Hayley Atwell) and daughter (Bronte Carmichael). When a live Winnie the Pooh (voiced by Jim Cummings as usual) finds him again and asks for help finding the rest of their friends, Christopher can only take it as a nervous breakdown from overwork, but for his own peace of mind, he pays a visit to his old stomping grounds. Initially, he plans only to drop Pooh off, but it's hard to shake off sentimentality altogether.

Infamous (2006)

This movie was, if you will, infamously unfortunate in its timing: It came out months after Capote and had a very similar focus, so many dismissed it. It doesn't enjoy quite as high ratings from IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes. But maybe a decade of distance will help me evaluate it on its own terms.

As in Capote, Truman Capote (Toby Jones herein), already a bestselling author, gets engrossed in researching two men on death row who murdered a family after an unsuccessful burglary. Here, however, we get to see him express deeper feelings about one murderer, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig with an American accent). While partner in crime Dick Hickock (Lee Pace) is a mostly amoral motormouth, Perry is both morally and intellectually complicated -- and slow to trust anyone with his life story, tho Truman threatens to make stuff up for his new quasi-reporting style. In time, they almost develop a romance.