Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is that rare true-story character piece that feels like a heist movie conducted with a typewriter and a hangover—sharp, sad, and wickedly funny in the same breath. Melissa McCarthy gives the kind of performance that quietly rearranges your expectations of her, turning Lee Israel into a prickly, brilliant mess you can’t look away from, while Richard E. Grant glides in with bruised charm as her dangerously delightful partner in misbehavior. Marielle Heller directs with a novelist’s eye for detail and a comedian’s timing, letting New York’s dim bars and dusty bookstores hum with temptation and loneliness without ever begging for sympathy. It’s not a warm hug of a film—its humor is dark and its people are complicated—but if you like smart adult dramas that bite as they ache, this one is irresistible.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is aiming for a character-driven, darkly funny portrait of a talented writer who’s cornered by failure and starts committing small, clever crimes to feel relevant again. Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant are genuinely terrific, finding humor and sting in people who aren’t trying to be likable, just trying to survive. The catch is that it’s deliberately low-key: the pacing can feel subdued, with stretches that play more like a melancholy hangout in grimy New York than a propulsive crime story. If you want a punchy caper, big emotional catharsis, or a tidy moral lesson, this may feel like it’s idling—but if you’re up for sharp dialogue, messy humanity, and a quietly sad comedy of self-sabotage, it lands.