Can You Ever Forgive Me? - Too good to be true

Can You Ever Forgive Me? has been a sleeper of sorts down under, despite its international acclaim. Its limited release is really a shame as it's a real gem. The film is based on a true story of biographer and literary forger Lee Israel.

Melissa McCarthy plays surly Lee with aplomb. Her drinking buddy cum partner in crime, Jack Hook, was a role tailored (in both senses of the word) for Richard E, Grant.

Lee is chalk to Jack's cheese. He is a charmer while she has had a charm by-pass. Her wit is caustic, his self-mocking. He is ostentatiously stylish to her drabness. In addition to their homosexuality, they share a great deal. They are eccentric misfits who have reached the bottom of the barrel, financially and socially. Alcohol oils their collaboration.

As always, New York City provides wonderful sets: the sleazy bars alongside the romance of quality bookshops and book dealers.

For most people in the early 90s, it's just the dawn of the digital age. Letters, handwritten or tapped out on typewriters, are still the norm. Email is still to come for most.

The targets of Israel's scam are easily fooled in this pre-information age, despite the high quality content screaming that it's too good to be true. Many see what they believe, some turn a blind-eye through greed, others are collectable devotees. It was a tribute to Lee's writing skills.

Director Marielle Heller 's second feature film maintains a good balance of drama and comedy.

This is not Wall Street fraud and in many ways they are victimless crimes. To really enjoy this film as I did, it is best not to dwell too long on the ethical aspects of this story. Like the protagonists, the celebrity authors are long gone.

Spotlight: Suffering the Silence

Spotlight is an old-fashioned movie about an old-fashioned craft - investigative journalism. Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy has stuck to the proven formula for this kind of story telling so effectively mastered in All The President's Men forty years ago. It is based on actual events and keeps to a straightforward narrative.

The Boston Globe's 2001 Spotlight team is bigger and has a woman on board (Sacha Pfeiffer well played by Rachel McAdams). A quick scan of the cast shows how nearly all aspects of this shameful epidemic were male-dominated. Clergy and laity, police, lawyers and judges, and journalists: all played their part in the systemwide sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and the collusion or silence of those who should have made it their business to expose it.

The two Spotlight male leads, Mark Ruffalo as Mike Rezendes and Michael Keaton as Wally 'Robby' Robinson, give very creditable performances. Liev Schreiber as the new Jewish outsider newspaper editor Marty Baron is hardly recognisable as his character from Wolverine. The beard helps.

This isn't a film about paedophile priests or its coverup by the highest levels of the Catholic church. Nor is it about "a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry". It is a story about journalism, its power and importance. The sort of journalism that is much less common now under the current financial and other pressures on newspapers and other old media.

IMDb has tagged the film as Biography, Drama, History and Thriller. It is primarily a crime investigation. As the credits indicate, it has been a global crime wave. Its 'survivors' suffered a long time in the silence that denied them justice.

Marshland: Old-fashioned crime

Director and co-writer Alberto Rodríguez has come up with a classy crime mystery in Marshland (La isla mínima, 'Minimal Island'). The Spanish language film swept the Goya awards for 2014. It is set in the south west of Spain in 1980 as two detectives track down the brutal murderer of two sisters.

In the process they uncover the dark side of this rural community. They are an odd couple. Pedro (Raúl Arévalo) is trying to get back to work and family in Madrid and Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) has a cloud over him from his days as one of Franco's 'Gestapo'. They are just the tip of a very professional cast.

It is just five years since the Generalissimo's death. Their relationship is strained by Juan's use of vigorous interrogation methods honed during the dictatorship.

The film has a very convincing late 70s atmosphere. Rodríguez seems to have borrowed both from Chinatown and Blowup for his inspiration. Photography is a key element linking both the crimes and the investigation. In addition the cinematography captures the bleakness of the environment and the despair of the local people whose lives are dominated by poverty and unemployment. This is especially true of the young women who are desperate to escape the traditional family and social bonds.

This a an old-fashioned movie with a very modern edge. It's film noir without the wit or the femme fatale.

Hitchcock: The Master at Work

Three films that helped to seal my lifelong love of cinema were directed by Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo, Rear Window and Psycho. So I went to see Hitchcock with some trepidation. Fortunately, it lived up to its promise.

Set against the making of Psycho in 1959, its main element of suspense is a personal one. His relationship with wife and artistic partner Alma Reville provides much more tension than the fairly conventional Hollywood dramas about budget, director's cut or official censorship.

It's a classy cast. Hithcock would have enjoyed working with them, especially the blondes. The leads carry off their parts with deceptive ease. Anthony Hopkins (Hitch) carries the weight of the Master comfortably, except when his paunch retains its iconic shape whilst lying down. Helen Mirren (Alma) and Scarlett Johansson (Janet Leigh) are superb. Tony Collette and Jessica Biel don't miss a beat either.

The film has the 1950s Hollywood look and feel: the studios, the Beverley Hill's house and pool, the beach shack, even the suits. It's bright, clean, colourful, crisp. All part of the American Dream. At times it reminded me of the movie Beloved Infidel about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheila Graham, which had similar backdrops and was also made in 1959.

This is one for the big screen. Hopkins' shower scene is at least the equal of the original.

Brighton Rock: Trying Too Hard

Brighton Rock has lots going for it: a Graham Greene classic; iconic locations; a social turning point; clashes of generations and sub-cultures; tragic love; and crime. Not to forget that it is also the era of the Second Vatican Council, with its attempt to modernise Catholicism.

Plus a stellar cast.

The original film, based on Greene’s 1938 novel, was made in 1947 the year I was born. This remake is set in 1964, my last year at school, a truly memorable one. At the time the Beatles are kings, angry youth in England side violently with the waning rockers or the trendy mods. At the same time the old local gangs face extinction by sophisticated, national criminal organisations. Both literally and figuratively, guns are replacing flick knives as the weapon of choice.

Young Pinkie (Sam Riley) is an old style psychopath. His idea of romance is to pull the legs off a spider like proverbial daisy petals. The seventeen year-old girl is in fact named Rose (Andrea Riseborough) and her romantic notions are quite the opposite. It’s a case of guile versus guileless. Riley and Riseborough both give excellent performances, though they often seem too controlled with emotions switching on and off.

Both characters have an Old Testament hell-fire view of Catholicism that is not adequately explored. It is just one of the many themes and sub-plots that compete for our attention. This adaptation tries to do too much.

The official website claims that it ‘embraces the classic elements of film noir and the British gangster film’. At times director Rowan Joffe’s style is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930s English crime movies or his 50s crime thrillers. However, he doesn’t quite hit the mark. Despite seductive sets and stunning scenery the look of this film is more 1950 than fifteen years later. Perhaps the changed timeframe was a mistake. This adaptation is trying to do too much.

The supporting cast are faultless: Helen Mirren as the relentless Ida; John Hurt as her admirer Phil Corkery; and Phil Davis as washed-out crim Spicer. Yet somehow most of them just don’t seem comfortable in this environment, not even the very typecast Davis. Godfather Colleoni (Andy Serkis) also seems an anachronism.

Perhaps the changed timeframe was a mistake. Brighton Rock revisited is a quality production but writer/director Joffe just tries too hard for this movie to become a classic.