Can You Ever Forgive Me?


2018 movie based on a true story

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A once-successful-but-now-struggling author finds a new career in writing fraudulent letters from famous people.

It's quite possible that this is my favorite Melissa McCarthy movie, but I'm not really in any shape to put a lot of thought into that. McCarthy's good here as this miserable human being wallowing in her own filth. Lee Israel's got the right mix of misanthropy and bite to make her appealing to a misanthropic biter like me. Israel, I imagine, wouldn't be likable to most people, but McCarthy does enough to let the humanity bleed through. There's pathos in this often-funny story of fraudulent epistles, best scene in quiet scenes with a possible friend or a cat or a filthy apartment.

Richard E. Grant is really great as Israel's gay friend, and he gets one scene to try to win himself a best supporting actor award.

If you've got a typewriter fetish, this might be the movie for you. I could have used a few more typewriting scenes actually. The cat is also a great animal actor. This movie might have some narrative redundancy and suffer from some of the issues that your typical biopic might, but it's a film that is very easy to watch.

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