Capote (2005)

An interesting character study that starts strong and then sort of peters out for the last hour-plus; we begin with a sense of purpose as Capote travels to Kansas and gathers information despite the  (misplaced) mistrust of the townsfolk toward him as a small, effeminate New Yorker and the (well-placed) mistrust of him as an author interested only in the story he has to tell.  After his initial interviews with the murderers, the movie seems to lose its forward momentum, and while the plot progresses by showing us Capote's evolving relationship with the murderers, the character's ambivalence toward this relationship and his own loss of a sense of purpose infects the film itself.  This ends up doing a good job of helping us to feel what Capote is supposed to be feeling, but I was ready to be done 75 minutes in, so the rest dragged quite a bit.

Thankfully they also made it accessible to those of us who aren't familiar with the celebrity of Truman Capote -- Sarah did immediately nail "Nell Harper Lee" as the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, but we didn't know she (Harper Lee, not Sarah) was good friends with Capote until seeing the film, and didn't know anyone else pictured in the movie, but it didn't matter because their roles; that is, their relationships to Capote, were well defined... as opposed to, say, I'm Not There, which was obtuse to those of us unfamiliar with the celebrity of Bob Dylan.