Capote

Name: Capote
Genre: Biography, Drama, Crime
Released: September 30, 2005
Duration: 114 min
Rating: 88
Cast: Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman

2005

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 40 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 267 Ratings

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7.7

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7.7	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 267 Ratings

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Capote

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Movie Details & Credits

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment | Release Date: September 30, 2005 | R

Starring: Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Summary: A profile of Truman Capote during the years he researched the story that was to become the basis for the book "In Cold Blood."

Director: Bennett Miller

Genre(s): Biography, Drama, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 114 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Roger Ebert

Philip Seymour Hoffman's precise, uncanny performance as Capote doesn't imitate the author so much as channel him, as a man whose peculiarities mask great intelligence and deep wounds. Read full review

100

TV Guide Magazine Ken Fox

Actor-turned-writer Dan Futterman's smart, subtle screenplay, which explores both Capote's determination to turn murder into literature and the deeply troubling questions he raised in the process. Read full review

100

Kirk Honeycutt

Capote represents something unique in cinema.…Most eye-catching for critics and audiences in the weeks to come will be Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant metamorphosis into the persona of the late author. Read full review

David Edelstein

Hoffman goes beyond the surface mannerisms and diction. He disappears into Capote. Read full review

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Catherine Keener is remarkably subtle and soulful as Capote's friend and helpmeet Harper Lee, who delivers a shocking verdict against him at the end, but the movie, as you probably will not be surprised to learn, is owned by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Read full review

William Arnold

Indeed, it has to be one of the most eerie, morbidly absorbing and psychologically compelling movies ever made about a writer in the agonizing process of creating an important piece of literature. Read full review

Ken Tucker

Aside from yet another solid performance from Catherine Keener-playing a Harper Lee just preparing to publish "To Kill a Mockingbird," and here to act as Capote's unheeded moral conscience-that's the ONLY reason to see Capote. Read full review

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User Reviews

Fantasy

Nov 1, 2005

Saw this movie yesterday and thought it was absolutely sensational. Philip Seymour Hoffman captured Truman Capote brilliantly. He deserves serious consideration for the Best Actor award. The ensemble cast pulled this off tremendously. Kudo's to all.

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K.Swisher

Feb 20, 2006

The best movie of the year. Brilliant acting, brilliant writing, brilliant direction. PSH and Catherine Keener deserve Oscars. You will leave the theatre haunted and contemplative.

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The3AcademySins

Aug 7, 2018

Capote is a rare film that tells a true story, is a character study, will make you question morality, society, and yourself. The suspense is incredibly well captured, and that is sometimes difficult in a biopic. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Capote is so precise, and it is easilyCapote is a rare film that tells a true story, is a character study, will make you question morality, society, and yourself. The suspense is incredibly well captured, and that is sometimes difficult in a biopic. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Capote is so precise, and it is easily one of the best acting performances since 2000, in my opinion. This is a must watch for acting students.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

AliC

Dec 7, 2005

Hoffman's Oscar is surely secured. An extraordinarily engaging, but uncomfortable movie, with the finest celluloid acting performance of the decade so far (that I've seen). Watch it, not something else.

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Spangle

Dec 6, 2013

Just absolutely brilliant. Philip Seymour Hoffman is impeccable as Truman Capote, as well as the rest of the cast. Director Bennett Miller sure has a knack for biopics, as both this as "Moneyball" are amazing works. With this film, it is most certainly slow and it took a bit to hook me in,Just absolutely brilliant. Philip Seymour Hoffman is impeccable as Truman Capote, as well as the rest of the cast. Director Bennett Miller sure has a knack for biopics, as both this as "Moneyball" are amazing works. With this film, it is most certainly slow and it took a bit to hook me in, but once I was hooked, I was two feet in until the end.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

MarkB.

Dec 2, 2005

This deceptively straightforward account of a significant period in the life and career of legendary author, raconteur and world-class eccentric Truman Capote is a classic example of the "warts-and-all" school of biographical storytelling: heavy on the warts, light on everything else. In This deceptively straightforward account of a significant period in the life and career of legendary author, raconteur and world-class eccentric Truman Capote is a classic example of the "warts-and-all" school of biographical storytelling: heavy on the warts, light on everything else. In telling the tale of how Capote, in researching and putting together his "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood, his famous account of the random, senseless murder of a Kansas family by two drifters, ingratiated himself with the townspeople as well as the killers, writer Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller paint the writer as an ethically challenged opportunist and master manipulator whose long decline and demise after the book's success seem like a karmic payoff. Like Kirk Douglas's unscrupulous newsman Chuck Tatum in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, who delayed attempts to rescue the victim of a mine disaster in order to stretch out the story, Capote is repeatedly seen playing around with the legal system in order to protract Perry Smith's and Dick Hickock's sentencing and time on Death Row and therefore buy himself extra time to artificially enhance the drama of the story and finish his research and writing. Under the circumstances, the town sheriff (Chris Cooper), who knew the victims and is forced to watch Capote try to subvert justice on legal technicalities, is a model of grace and decorum under extreme provocation: I can see how even some partial proponents of the Miranda and Escobedo laws may want to see the lawman take a Buford Pusser-sized club to the intrusive, obsequious little pipsqueak. And even if you totally oppose capital punishment in theory and practice, it's difficult to justify the emotional torture that Capote puts Smith and Hickock through, dragging out the inevitable rather than mercifully letting justice be speedy. As far as the bestselling result of Capote's string-pulling is concerned, I think trash novelist and Capote foe Jacqueline Susann said it best (and had her finest moment ever) when she expressed her distaste for the book's unseemly sympathy for the killers on the basis that the unfortunate Clutter family was middle class. (Richard Brooks' excellent 1967 film version, one of the very last big-studio black and white movies of the 1960s, was far more balanced in its view.) As screen bios go, I wish the film had been more cinematically exciting to watch, like last year's dazzling Kinsey or the current underreleased and underrated Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio; except for some chilling reenactments of the crime, it's too much of a talking-head movie too often, but the performances make it a must-see. Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor with no sense of egotistical self-protection whatsoever (remember his unflattering role as a tubby porn-film crew member with an unrequited crush on Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, and let's not even go into what he was most famous for doing in Happiness!) adds dimensionality if not always sympathy to the title role and not only nails Capote's famously peculiar speech and other mannerisms, but even more impressively makes the viewer completely used to them in record time. But equally good (if not even better) is Catherine Keener as Capote's friend and sometime assistant, To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee, who also acts as Capote's final judge. I've always liked Keener, but found her characterizations in most movies rather too pigeonholed: in nearly everything from Walking and Talking to Being John Malkovich, she's too often played the sharp-tongued rhymes-with-witch. But this year, in the otherwise mediocre thriller The Interpreter, the delightful comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin and now this, she's admirably expanded her repertoire: watching Keener redefine her screen persona playing tough-minded but big-hearted women in all three films is one of the major moviegoing thrills and treats of 2005.… Expand

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SandraB.

Apr 28, 2006

Are you people on crack or something? This movie is wildly overrated. I believe all of you had mistaken its dullness as something meaningful. A large portion of the movie was silent and tried to give some kind of thoughtful appearance when there was absolutely nothing to think about. It had Are you people on crack or something? This movie is wildly overrated. I believe all of you had mistaken its dullness as something meaningful. A large portion of the movie was silent and tried to give some kind of thoughtful appearance when there was absolutely nothing to think about. It had no insight to Capote's life and as to why he was a weird depressed author who eventually died from alcoholism. There were absolutely no character development. If the director had tried then I can honestly tell you he failed. Also, Hoffman's acting was so atrociously over the top. It's digusting how people made this awful movie out as such a thoughtful, meaningful, and artful movie which it totally wasn't. Those people only scream PRETENTIOUS! This movie was trying so desperately to be meaningful, but it failed miserably. It is just a complete failure & disaster.… Expand

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