Can You Ever Forgive Me? Is A Skillfully Subdued Triumph

Like the boys (A.K.A. Zac Efron and Corbin Bleau) in High School Musical 3: Senior Year, writer/director Marielle Heller is back after her outstanding 2015 directorial effort The Diary of a Teenage Girl. A movie bursting at the seams with authentic portrayals of all the complexities of a specific teenagers angst, anything she did as a follow-up to that excellent motion picture was gonna grab my attention. But the fact that such a sophomore directorial effort, entitled Can You Ever Forgive Me?, would also serve as a chance for Melissa McCarthy to flex her dramatic acting muscles meant this was a movie that's been very much on my radar for ages now (it probably would have been on my radar anyway though given how many times I've seen the trailer over the past seven months).

The Land of Steady Habits Thoughtfully Probes The Long-Term Consequences Of A Persons Actions

Watching Ben Mendelsohn get interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! this past Thursday allowed me the chance to become even more impressed with Mendelsohn as an actor than I already was and I already was pretty impressed with him! Ben Mendelsohn exuded a self-deprecating yet quietly confident charm in his interactions with Kimmel, a sharp contrast to the scummy morally duplicitous characters he usually plays in films and television programs. The whole process of acting is about immersing oneself in a role drastically different from their own everyday persona but one can take for granted just how wide the gulf between a person's performance and their actual personality can be until you see the guy who helped create the Death Star being a total charmer on late night TV.