Never cried, or fallen in love, harder in a film

Review of Hamnet (2025) by kcookandcatsco: 👍 10.0/10

This movie is incredible. It's the most incredible film we've seen all year, and maybe in many years.

I perhaps have never seen a more complete, resonant or uplifting statement on grief and what I refer to as The Human Situation (after a class I had to take in college).

Go read my review on Medium, naturally (it's the 'personal blog' link here), but the primary contention of that piece that I will reiterate here is that we should have a Best Child Actor Oscar.

I think a Best Male and Best Female Child Actor would probably be overdoing it (child actors are good and deserve recognition, but it's not like they're knocking it out of the park every day, either), but it makes total sense to me and I think we should all pressure AMPAS to adopt a Best Child Actor or Best Lead Performance by a Child Actor, something to that effect, to honor and recognize the truly spectacular and special performances that child actors contribute.

In this movie, I'd argue there are three. Jacobi Jupe is the titular, eponymous Hamnet, and what he did positively blew me away. Judith (Olivia Lynes, who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page or blue link there yet) and Susannah (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), too.

This movie has three of the best child-actor performances I've ever seen given, and it made me think it's a shame we don't already have a category for recognizing their work in this film.

Go read my Medium review, and then let's all start pressuring AMPAS to add that category, because they're a bunch of happy-to-be-led Followers and can be bullied into pretty much anything.