'A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood' (2019) Movie Review

When you make a movie about a regular, everyday person who encounters a fascinating, larger-than-life individual—especially one based on a real-life icon—and that interesting person isn’t the main character, you run the risk of your protagonist fading into the background, being nowhere near as engaging as this secondary character, and the audience not giving a shit about the central figure in your narrative.

'Can You Ever Forgive Me?' (2018) Movie Review

Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) is a miserable human being. She’s a drunk, working menial jobs she feels are below her, and does her level best to push away everyone in her life except her elderly cat. In dire straits and driven by desperation, the former best-selling author and celebrity biographer turns to forging personal letters from famous literary figures, selling her wares to unsuspecting collectors. Such is the plot of Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which recounts Israel’s bizarre real-life saga, carried by a soaring, career-best performance from McCarthy.