It’s often a tragic tale, but it’s also funny, charming and bittersweet in all the right ways. Here’s hoping it resonates as strongly with creators of all kinds everywhere.

| Jul 14, 2024

Melissa McCarthy turns in a great performance as the grouchy writer and Richard Grant is terrific as her gay sidekick.

| Dec 7, 2022

McCarthy and Grant have really nice chemistry and that makes for some entertaining back-and-forths between two otherwise shady people.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Films about writers are hard to make. Films about real-life writers impersonating multiple celebrities in letters bring an element of some much-welcomed lunacy to a film that makes Can You Ever Forgive Me? more of a literary Catch Me If You Can.

| Original Score: 3.5 | Aug 17, 2022

This film is a bittersweet delight and McCarthy shines in a role that should be thoroughly unappealing but isn’t. In fact, she delivers a kind of queer, feminist anti-hero that I have not seen before.

| May 20, 2022

Makes for an unlikely story of redemption, one that leaves its audience oddly appreciative of the artistry it took to carry out a fraud.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 4, 2022

If you love Melissa McCarthy as a comedienne, you're still going to love her here.

| Oct 5, 2021

The plotting is a little woolly at times, but is entirely made up for by McCarthy, Grant and a pithy script the brings a sparkle of joy to this dowdy brown New York palette.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2021

I'd pay to watch Melissa McCarthy stare at a wall. She'd make that a performance. Her ability to create emotional momentum out of thin air is second to none.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 30, 2021

You've never seen two characters like this just get to hang out on a movie screen, and two hours is barely enough... I'm already desperately hoping there are hours of cut footage for the blu-ray to savor

| Original Score: A | Jul 6, 2021

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a charming, understated movie that peers into the inner lives of two recluses.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 25, 2021

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is ignited by Melissa McCarthy who gives the best performance of her career.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 1, 2021

McCarthy stars in this brilliant biopic of Lee Israel, a biographer-turned-literary forger who made a decent living faking letters in the style of greats like Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker.

| May 11, 2021

A hugely likeable movie about wholly unloveable criminals...

| Apr 29, 2021

Wraps up just a bit too conveniently, making it the best feel-good movie about loneliness and despondency ever made.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2021

[Richard E. Grant] absolutely lights up the screen in every scene.

| Feb 9, 2021

The camaraderie, humor, and bittersweetness of the finale can't overcome the strangeness of Lee's fate, which doesn't feel like fitting justice.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 5, 2020

McCarthy and Grant are dynamite.

| Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Nov 14, 2020

Exceptional performances carry this peculiar true story.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 5, 2020

This real-life rise and fall is amusing, as well as deftly acted by its two leads.

| Oct 22, 2020