Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : 'I see you.' Helen ( Claire Foy , right) acquaints herself with her new companion goshawk in the British bereavement drama, ' H is for Hawk ', adapted from Helen MacDonald 's memoir by director Philippa Lowthorpe , who co-wrote the screenplay with Emma Donoghue . Still courtesy of Lionsgate .    Filmgoers have one common ask of filmmakers: put something on screen that we haven’t seen before. Director Philippa Lowthorpe and her team absolutely meet the brief with their British film, H is for Hawk , an absorbing study of one academic’s exceptional response to the loss of their father, based on the memoir by Helen MacDonald (pronouns: they/them). Grief does not adequately categorize Helen’s emotional state, nor depression either, though they are diagnosed with this late in the drama. Fascinated by goshawks from their student days and sharing their late father’s appreciation of nature, Helen chooses to displace academia with training a hawk. If they can’t...

  Pictured : Room for one more? Charlie ( Lily Whiteley , right) brings disgraced former weatherman, Chris ( Ryan Corr ) another young kangaroo in the family-friendly Australian film, ' Kangaroo ', written by Harry Cripps and directed by Kate Woods . Still courtesy of StudioCanal . There was a time when films featured real animals, trained to do endearing stuff on camera. They might be replaced by a puppet or an animatronic model – especially if the animal in question was a great white shark, there’s no telling them what to do - but we could find ourselves falling in love with the cute St. Bernard dog, Siamese cat or indeed Champion the Wonder Horse, whom I imagine was portrayed (if that’s the right verb) by more than one stallion. Then came computer generated imagery – CGI – and it changed everything. Now raccoons, Peruvian bears, cats and dogs can be rendered digitally to a high degree of verisimilitude, except that they stand on hind legs and sound like Bradley Cooper, Ben ...