Can You Ever Forgive Me

First Hit: Excellent acting about a caustic, friendless author that finally finds her voice.

Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) is a biographer who is fixated on writing Fanny Brice biographies. She appeared once on the NYT Best Seller list but that was years ago. Her Agent tells her she’s got to change, but Lee, an obsessive alcoholic, likes her alienating way of living.

Then Lee loses her late-night editing job because she drinks and swears at her co-workers. Broke, with a sick cat, and behind in her rent she stumbles across an envelope with a typed and signed letter from a famous deceased author. She takes this letter to a book and artifact seller who gives her a few hundred dollars.

Realizing that she could sell forge letters with old typewriters and seasoned paper, she begins a quest of creating letters, signing them, and selling them to collectors and people who sell to collectors.

She befriends Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant) who is a homeless gay man at a bar who is also a drunk. Together the conspire to make and sell lots of these fake letters. Enjoying the fruits of their labor they eat well and Israel gets her old cat healed. Anna (Dolly Wells), one of the buyers of Lee’s fake letter, likes Lee and suggests they have dinner together. Sensing that Anna wants to get close, Lee blows her off but not before she accepts one of Anna’s short stories Anna would like feedback on.

This points out one of the incomplete and unsatisfying parts of the film. The film shows Lee reading this short story but never getting back to Anna. Another aspect of the story I would have liked more visibility into was why was Israel so cold, mean, and alienating towards people.

The forgeries are found out and the FBI is now after Lee. Getting caught through another one of Hock’s blunders, they create a plan to steal real letters and replace the real letters with her fakes.

As one imagines, she gets caught and is told to make restitution for her crimes. The result she now has something to write about and this story is the result.

McCarthy is sublime as Israel. She made this unlikeable character engaging, curiously interesting, and watchable. Grant was fantastic as the bon vivant wanna be that lived life on his charm alone. Wells was strikingly engaging as the bookseller who cared about Israel. I loved her trusting softness. Jane Curtin as Israel’s agent Marjorie was excellent, direct and forthcoming. Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty wrote a strong and engaging screenplay. Marielle Heller did an excellent job of directing this film except I would have liked some closure on Anna’s script storyline.

Overall: This was a crafted film with excellent acting.

Logan

First Hit:  As a superhero movie, it's realistically dark and thoughtful.

Most superhero films are either tongue in cheek, lighthearted, go overboard on the superpower action, or all of these things. This film doesn’t do any of this. It is downright about the characters some who have superpower traits.

We have Logan (Hugh Jackman) as Wolverine who is aging, ill, and driving a limousine to make enough money for him and Caliban (Stephen Merchant) to take care of X-Men leader Charles (Patrick Stewart) who is dying. They are living out in the middle of nowhere and seem to be counting their days till they fade away and die. There haven’t been any new mutants born in the last 25 years and the clan is dying out.

However, a Dr. Rice (Richard E. Grant) has been experimenting with genetics on embryos and young children trying to create warriors/soldiers with superpower abilities. He's trying to create his own mutants. However, he's discovered that they have feelings and minds and cannot be controllable easily. He thinks he's got a way to make mutants that don't act on their own so he decides to kill all his previous experiments. Learning this, the young kids who are still alive, stage a revolt and escape.

Laura (Dafne Keen) is assisted by a nurse in the clinic and is in search of finding Logan because Laura has Logan's genetics and his wolverine superpower. The story is about how Logan helps Laura escape Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), Dr. Rice and a group of soldiers whose job is to kill all the remaining mutant children.

The effective parts of the story include strong acting by Jackman as a superhero whose both aging and slowly being poisoned by the adamantium (fictional metal alloy) that is imbedded in his body. The high-strung touchiness by which Logan and Caliban have towards each other while taking care of an ever-fragile Charles is indicative of their fading lives. The scenes are designed to breathe and nothing was rushed to show the strength of the mutant children, Laura, Charles, Logan, or Caliban. However, the ending fight was a little elongated and the men brought in to capture the mutants were too large an army to be believable.

From an acting point of view Jackman was perfect. It would be my guess that he’s probably glad to end his reign as Wolverine. He ends it with dignity which is a good thing because Marvel has let other characters in its stable get too far afield to enjoy or believe. Merchant was wonderful as Caliban with his ability to track and find. He made this role work. Stewart was wonderful and, like Jackman, is probably glad to have this role end because series like these can get too wildly convoluted. Grant was appropriately arrogant as Dr. Rice. Keen was mind-blowingly sublime. I loved her character and silence throughout the film until the end. She was totally believable. Holbrook as the soldier tasked with finding Laura was appropriately demonized. Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green wrote a very solid, strong and not overdone script. Characters could grow and develop which is rare in a superhero type film. Mangold did a wonderful job of directing this story and making it work.

Overall:  This was one of the best superhero mutant films on the books.

Dom Hemingway

Hit:  This is a well done story about a man who is not likeable and continually makes bad choices.

Dom (Jude Law) is full of himself. He’s been an angry criminal his whole life.

As the film begins he’s in jail and telling the audience, over and over again, why his “cock” is a work of art. You don’t see the person giving him a BJ but you know he’s getting one.

That is the opening scene. He’s Dom Hemingway and the audience and the other character’s in the film know this. He gets released from jail after serving 12 years for not ratting out Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir).

His first act is to find the guy who supported his wife while he was in prison and beat the holy livin’ crap out of him. He’s not seen his daughter in all this time and wants to see her and maybe develop a relationship. But he is afraid of reaching out because he knows he's done wrong by her. To deal with it, he drinks himself into his next mistake.

This film is dark, Dom is dark and makes a slew of bad choices thinking he’s invincible. Did the film work? Yes. Was the subject likeable? Not to very many people. And that is the hard part of this film. It is really difficult to like Dom. However he does have a friend in the film Dickie Black (Richard E. Grant) and it is this friend that eases the film through Dom’s tirades.

Law is fully engaged with the character Dom and played him well. It is just difficult to like the character. Birchir is very good as the mob chief who owes Dom money for his silence. Grant is superb as Dom’s grounding friend. Richard Shepard both wrote and directed this film. The writing and direction was good, it is simply a dark film with an unlikeable character.

Overall:  Not very likeable.