A film centered around Mary Poppins—particularly author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), who's loathe to sell her Mary Poppins books to the animated cryogenic head of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks). It's 1961, she's broke, and Disney has been needling her for 20 years for the rights—but Travers knows, deep within her prickly soul, that he's going to put his spin all over her characters. Finally she relents, on the condition that she gets creative control. Mary Poppins does indeed get the chirpy treatment at the hands of Disney, but Travers is also in the writing room giving scrupulous input: She's a major sourpuss about the whole endeavor, unbending about characters she considers family. Hanks' Disney is genial, but not above kicking back with a highball and chewing the fat about his shitty dad. They're both flawed and human characters—a portrayal that, in Disney's case, is rather surprising. by Courtney Ferguson