Melissa McCarthy is outstanding in this retrospective dealing with the more "creative" aspects of the later career of acclaimed author Lee Israel. She genuinely elicits sympathy for the emptiness in, and sadness of, her life that led her to create a string of forgeries that led the literary world on a merry dance for years. Richard E. Grant totally deserved his Oscar nomination as her mischievous abettor and this all makes for a great trip through the mind of a not very devious or systematic criminal. Nothing like anything seen from McCarthy before, let's hope that there might be more of the same to come.
