Popcorn Junkies Movie Reviews · Popcorn Junkies

H Is For Hawk - The Popcorn Junkies Movie Review

·15 min·1 clip

The hawk becomes a mirror for Brendan Gleeson’s photographer father and his emotional distance.

1. Popcorn Junkies Movie Reviews covers H Is for Hawk, the film adaptation of Helen MacDonald’s memoir about grief and a goshawk. 2. Hayden reviews the film, and he frames Steven as the listener for his movie take; the review also names Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Denise Goff, and Lindsay Duncan as the main performers. 3. The episode asks whether H Is for Hawk works as a portrait of grief, depression, and emotional retreat rather than as a showy film. 4. Hayden says the source material is a widely awarded memoir by Helen MacDonald about losing her father and training a bird of prey. 5. He describes Helen MacDonald as a research student at Cambridge University, with the “spires of Cambridge” and its “rarefied” academic atmosphere standing out. 6. Brendan Gleeson plays Helen’s father, Alastair MacDonald, whom Hayden calls a respected photojournalist with famous images linked to Thatcher, Bowie, and Jagger. 7. Denise Goff plays Helen’s best friend at university, and Lindsay Duncan plays her mother. 8. Hayden says the film is “very gentle, unpretentious, unshowy-offy” and treats grief as its central subject. 9. He repeatedly returns to Helen’s father’s death and to the way the loss sits alongside her ongoing work and teaching at Cambridge. 10. He argues that the film leans on Claire Foy’s face, her tidiness, her finances, and her self-care to show her decline. 11. A key image is the goshawk itself, which Hayden calls “one of the most untrainable and most ferocious” birds of prey. 12. He notes that Claire Foy withstands the bird “slap[ping] her head with its wings repeatedly” during training, and he praises those scenes as “incredibly watchable.” 13. Hayden is struck by hawk facts in the film, including the hood used to calm the bird and the idea that hawks act through “pure instinct.” 14. He says the bird’s behavior has “no mediation between instinct and action,” which he treats as one of the film’s clearest ideas. 15. He sees a parallel between the hawk’s cold focus and Brendan Gleeson’s photographer character, especially the moment when he jumps out to photograph a crash. 16. Hayden later argues that the father’s file system, his annotated photos, and his emotional distance suggest a steeliness that mirrors the daughter’s relationship with the hawk. 17. The review’s tone is conversational and reflective, with Hayden moving between plot summary, personal reactions, and close reading of performance. 18. He also says he wanted the film to be more experimental or impressionistic, especially after the opening feather close-ups. 19. People interested in grief dramas, Claire Foy, or animal-centered adaptation. 20. Viewers wanting fast pacing, visual experimentation, or lighter material.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Popcorn Junkies Movie Reviews