Jeff
Jeff called it, from his perspective, maybe the deepest exploration of death and grief he's seen on screen, and was surprised it didn't win Best Picture. He admits he and Matt might be biased: as the father of one son, the idea of losing a child is something he's actually had to sit with, and the film pushed that further than he expected. He was struck by how differently Agnes and Will process their grief, hers spilling out publicly, his channeled quietly into his plays, and called the performance of Hamlet at the end the emotional climax. He also pushed back on online criticism that the lead performances were overly dramatic; he didn't see it that way at all.
Matt
Matt agreed the performances landed, though he thought a few of Agnes's scenes ran a little hot for his taste; he found the more controlled performance closer to how he personally processes grief. He loved the visual motifs of doors and passageways, including a scene where Will and Hamnet say goodbye across a divide in the frame before either of them knows what it means, and called the film one that rewards close, scene-by-scene study. He also praised how much license the script takes with the few known facts of Shakespeare's life, contrasting it with The Greatest Showman's distortion of a much better documented one.