H Is for Hawk

Dan Hanson3.0

Can’t wait for the sequel.H2 is for Hawk 2uah

davidehrlich2.0

Few stiff upper lips — not even Queen Elizabeth’s — have ever been stiffer than the one Claire Foy sports throughout the better part of Philippa Lowthorpe’s “H Is for Hawk,” which is adapted from Helen MacDonald’s deservedly ubiquitous 2014 grief memoir of the same name. Foy naturally plays a version of the author (her character uses she/her pronouns, while MacDonald identifies as non-binary), a level-headed Cambridge academic who develops an all-consuming addiction to falconry rather than face the hurt of her photojournalist father’s sudden death. But where the book had the benefit of MacDonald’s beautiful and searching interior monologue, the movie chooses to articulate her pain — as well as her refusal to process it — from the outside in. That decision leaves us to read chapters’ worth of nuanced hurt into the stony defiance of Foy’s scowl, just as Helen has to search for meaning in the expressionless face of the goshawk she adopts as the world’s least comforting comfort animal. On some level, that double-sided inaccessibility is crucial to a tale of two unfeeling creatures whose survival depends on their mutual ability to share “an honest encounter with death,” but honesty isn’t the problem with this adaptation. Barring a few of the very screenplay-like scenarios that Lowthorpe and co-writer Emma Donoghue (of “Room” fame) contrive during the film’s third act, “H Is for Hawk” is too rooted in the truth of its source material — and too grounded by the sheer reality of watching Foy react to the whims of her feathered co-star — to suffer from a lack of believability. The trouble here has less to do with verisimilitude than engagement; this story about the power and pratfalls of emotional projection simply doesn’t inspire enough feeling for us to see much of anything on either of its two blank screens. ~this review continues on IndieWire~

Adam Forrest3.0

I’m sorry, but if she ever brings that thing on an airplane, then the “emotional support animal” loophole will have officially gone too far.Included in list:2025 Movies Ranked