Warm Springs
Warm Springsis a riveting, deeply moving film about a lesser-known chapter in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the American president who saw his country through the dark, terrible times of the Great Depression and most of World War II.  Before those epochal events, however, Roosevelt spent time in a political wilderness, groomed for high office but struck down by polio at age 39.Warm Springsis the fascinating story of Roosevelt's painful journey from despair back to wisdom and leadership. Kenneth Branagh gives an emotionally raw, courageous performance as FDR, estranged from his wife, Eleanor (a near-luminous Cynthia Nixon), and his political guru (David Paymer) while ambivalently seeking rehabilitation at Warm Springs, a broken-down spa in the backwoods of Georgia. Mired in misery, misanthropy, and drink, Roosevelt is coaxed back to civilized behavior and a glimmer of altruism by the spa's ailing, folksy manager, Tom Loyless (a remarkable Tim Blake Nelson), and the ministrations of a progressive-minded, physical therapist (solid work by Kathy Bates). Word of Roosevelt's improvement in the buoyant, mineral-rich waters of Warm Springs draws other polio victims--some of whom endure terrible discrimination and misery while traveling—to the spa. In time, these hopeful, all-ages paraplegics form a community that inspires a sense of mission in Roosevelt, setting the stage for his return to the political arena. Surehanded, 80-year-old veteran director Joseph Sargent (on a roll following his lovely, 2004 cable movieSomething the Lord Made) has made a pitch-perfect and intimate, historical drama one never wants to see end.--Tom Keogh