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The Boys in the Boat

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The Boys in the BoatA Triumph Worth Rowing For: The Boys in the Boat

There’s something quietly stirring about The Boys in the Boat — both Daniel James Brown’s book and George Clooney’s film adaptation. I went in expecting a solid sports drama and came away deeply moved, even if a few moments felt, well, a touch too polished by Hollywood’s hand.

Set against the bleak backdrop of the Great Depression, the story follows nine working-class young men from the University of Washington who dared to dream beyond their circumstances. Sons of loggers, shipbuilders, and farmers, they rowed their way from obscurity to the 1936 Berlin Olympics — and into history — by defeating not only the privileged Ivy League elites but also Hitler’s hand-picked German crew.

At the emotional centre is Joe Rantz, the quiet, determined soul whose life reads like something out of Dickens. Abandoned at fifteen, Joe built his life from the ground up — literally — and found belonging not in family, but in the rhythm and unity of the boat. Brown captures this beautifully, weaving Joe’s struggle for acceptance with the team’s relentless pursuit of excellence.

Then there’s George Pocock, the philosopher-craftsman whose poetic reverence for rowing gives the story its spiritual lift. For him, the perfect stroke wasn’t just athletic — it was transcendent, a “symphony of motion.”

The Boys in the Boat

Olympic champion crew team, University of Washington; this team won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; Handwritten on border: 1936 – Olympic Champions.

Clooney’s direction honours that spirit, capturing the class divide of “old money versus no money at all” with warmth and sincerity. Yet at times, the film bows to convention — a few too many tidy crescendos and sentimental cues where raw restraint might have spoken louder. Still, those moments never sink in.

For anyone drawn to true tales of grit and grace — Unbroken, Chariots of Fire, or Seabiscuit come to mind — this story stands proudly alongside them. And the most touching detail? When Brown interviewed the elderly Joe Rantz, he wept only when remembering the boat — that fleeting, perfect unity that defined a lifetime.

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#MovieReview #TheBoysInTheBoat #GeorgeClooney #FilmAdaptation #ACOMSDave #UnderdogStory #Olympics #TrueStory

 

Jean Genet – Un Chant d’Amour – Movie Review

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Un Chant d’Amour – Jean Genet’s Silent Cry of Desire

Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour (1950) remains one of the most haunting and poetic portrayals of forbidden desire ever committed to film. This 26-minute black-and-white short — the only film Genet ever directed — is both stark and lyrical, a work born out of confinement, yearning, and resistance.

For years, the film was banned for what was seen as “explicit homosexual content.” Today, those same images — bodies reaching across prison bars, smoke shared between lips, a flower trembling in the air — read not as scandalous, but as profoundly human. Genet gives us love stripped bare, fragile and defiant, a song whispered through the cracks of a cell wall.

Inside the Prison Walls

The story unfolds in a French prison where two men — one older, the other young and tattooed — are separated by thick stone and iron. Their only intimacy is through gesture and imagination: a tendril of smoke, a caress of the wall, a bouquet of wildflowers passed between bars but never received.

Hovering over them is a prison guard, a figure of authority, voyeurism, and jealousy. He spies on the prisoners’ private acts of longing, unable to understand them yet drawn inescapably toward them. When his envy turns violent, beating the older prisoner, the scene dissolves into fantasy — a pastoral escape where the two men can finally exist together, free from chains and shame.

The guard’s intrusion, particularly the disturbing moment when he forces the prisoner to simulate oral sex with his gun, serves as Genet’s commentary on power, repression, and the perverse relationship between control and desire. The final image — a hand grasping the long-offered flowers — completes the film’s circle of longing: love reaching out through impossibility.

A Silent Language of the Body

Genet forgoes dialogue entirely. Instead, the film speaks in close-ups — of torsos, faces, armpits, penises — each frame both sensual and symbolic. It’s cinema as pure visual poetry. The camera lingers not to titillate, but to witness. Every movement, every breath, becomes an act of resistance against invisibility.

At a time when queer love was criminalised and pathologised, Un Chant d’Amour dared to look directly, unapologetically, at the erotic. It’s not pornography, as its censors claimed, but a meditation on longing and the human need for connection — made even more profound by its silence.

Censorship and Legacy

When the film finally surfaced in the U.S. in the 1960s, it ignited fierce legal battles. Judges labelled it “cheap pornography calculated to promote homosexuality,” banning it outright. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the ban without explanation — a quiet erasure of one of queer cinema’s first authentic expressions of desire.

And yet, like all true art, Un Chant d’Amour endured. It circulated underground, influencing generations of filmmakers, writers, and queer artists who recognised in its imagery both a mirror and a manifesto.

Critical Reflections

Today, critics recognise the film as a landmark. The Queer Encyclopedia of Film & Television calls it “one of the earliest and most remarkable attempts to portray homosexual passion on-screen.” For some, it remains “pretentious” or “curio value” — but that misses the point. Genet wasn’t making entertainment; he was crafting an act of defiance.

In Un Chant d’Amour, love becomes a subversive force — one that outlasts authority, confinement, and shame. It’s not just a film about desire; it’s a

 love letter to the silenced.

Reflection

Watching it now, Un Chant d’Amour still feels radical — not because of its nudity or its notoriety, but because of its tenderness. In its silence, Genet gives us a universal truth: that love, however repressed, finds a way to reach across the bars.

Director – Jean Genet
Writer – Jean Genet
Stars – Bravo, Jean Genet, Java

 

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Thirteen or So Minutes: A Quiet Revolution in the Span of a Coffee Break

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13 or so minutes Nick Soper - 13 or so minutesShort films often struggle to justify their existence, either feeling like a rushed concept or an overlong sketch. William Branden Blinn’s award-winning Thirteen or So Minutes avoids both pitfalls by distilling a lifetime of confusion, discovery, and sudden intimacy into its brief runtime. This isn’t just a snapshot; it’s a profound seismic event that happens quietly, in a single room, between two strangers.

The setup is deceptively simple and, let’s be honest, instantly intriguing: Lawrence Jefferies (Soper) and Hugh Greerey (Salas) are two straight men who have just met. Both have a history of girlfriends. Now, a mere handful of minutes later—thirteen or so, if you want to be precise—they are left staring at the ceiling, or maybe at the wall, grappling with the fact that they’ve just spontaneously had sex.

The film’s true genius lies in what follows. Once the physical act is over, the real intimacy begins. The narrative pivots entirely to the conversation, the hesitant, vulnerable, and often comical dialogue between the two men as they attempt to map out the uncharted territory of their shared experience verbally. This isn’t about sensationalising a sudden moment of fluidity; it’s about the raw, honest human response to discovering a desire you never knew you possessed.

Soper and Salas are excellent. They play the moment not for shock, but for genuine, bewildered chemistry. You feel their confusion, their panic, and the underlying, undeniable strong desire that the Wikipedia premise refers to. Director and writer Blinn understands that the biggest stakes often exist not in explosions or car chases, but in the terrifying moment when you have to admit something true and unexpected about yourself.

By winning prizes at festivals like the Rainbow Film Festival, the film proves that its exploration of social and sexuality issues resonates powerfully. It suggests that attraction isn’t always a rigidly defined path, but sometimes a sudden, inexplicable detour. Thirteen or So Minutes is a thoughtful and essential watch that manages to convey more about the messy, beautiful complexities of human sexuality in fourteen minutes than most feature-length dramas do in two hours. A great piece of work.

 

Director: William Branden Blinn 

Writer: William Branden Blinn 

Stars: Nick Soper, Carlos Salas 

Running Time: 14 minutes

 

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Oranges [2004] Movie Review

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Oranges (2004) – A Small Story with Lasting Taste

Oranges 2004Oranges, the 2004 Australian short, is striking in its simplicity. Nothing grand happens here, yet everything that matters does. A bicycle accident brings two boys together; one brags about his experiences with girls, though whether it’s truth or bravado is left for us to quietly consider. What unfolds in these ordinary exchanges is less about the words spoken and more about the silences between them—the hesitations, the glances, the fragile reach of teenage bravado colliding with real curiosity.

What gives the film its coherence is the spirit of age—that tender, awkward threshold where innocence meets awareness. Two boys, trying to impress one another, trying to test the edges of possibility, and eventually circling the fascination of a kiss. The moment arrives with a delicacy that feels unforced. It is not spectacle, not melodrama, but something closer to memory itself. For many viewers, it will stir recognition: the taste of first encounters, the fragile intensity of being young and unsure, the imprint of moments that change everything even as they pass quickly.

The casting matters here. Both actors are of the right age, and there is no artifice in their performances. Their willingness to share that kiss without hesitation makes the film feel honest, free from the self-consciousness that often burdens such portrayals. The beauty of Oranges lies in this lack of pretension.

And then, the final image: the orange itself, tied back to the story in a way that lingers. Its taste—sweet, sharp, and fleeting—becomes the memory that covers over the awkwardness of the encounter, leaving behind something strangely whole. Like Proust’s madeleine, it anchors the moment, giving it both poetry and permanence.

Oranges is a lovely short film. Touching, tender, fragile, more than realistic. In its small gestures, it finds truth. In its simplicity, it offers revelation. And like the fruit itself, it lingers—bright, bittersweet, unforgettable

Director:  Kristian Pithie

Writer:     Kristian Pithie

Stars:       Martin Sharpe,  Thomas Blackburne,  Robyn Nethercote

 

Oranges 2004

Oranges 2004

Oranges 2004

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Summer Friends [2021] – Movie Review

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Summer FriendsSummer Friends (2021) – Between Tides and First Feelings

Maxime Hermet’s short film Summer Friends takes us into the fragile, in-between world of adolescence, where friendships stretch and shift under the weight of new encounters.

Tom and Ellis, both fifteen, have known no summer without each other. Their days are spent at sea, casting lines into the water, their bond built on an ease that requires little talk. Their friendship feels as steady and unbroken as the horizon they face together.

When Lucie arrives in their small village for the holidays, that horizon tilts. Played by Syrine Conesa, she is at once familiar and new—an outsider who draws them out of their habits. What begins as idle company slowly takes on a different shape, carrying with it the electricity of first intimacies and the quiet fear of change.

Jean Aviat and Tim Rousseau embody Tom and Ellis with a raw naturalism, letting glances and pauses do most of the speaking. Hermet resists dramatics, instead allowing theSummer Friends silences, the play of light on water, and the passing days to carry the story forward. The film is less concerned with what happens than with the unspoken tension of what might.

Summer Friends runs under twenty minutes, but its images linger. It leaves the aftertaste of a season remembered: the sense of time both endless and fleeting, the discovery that friendship can expand and fracture in the same breath, and the knowledge that even the smallest summer can leave permanent marks.

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As I Am

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Movie Review: As I Am (2020)

As I AmAnthony Bawn’s As I Am (2020) is a haunting portrait of a man wrestling with the weight of his past and the fear of what his reflection might reveal. It’s a story that sits at the crossroads of LGBTQ+ drama and romance, but its true power lies in its unflinching exploration of memory, regret, and identity.

At its core is August Chandler (Andre Myers), once celebrated for his athletic talent, now teetering on the edge of emotional collapse. A young man who has long run from the truth of his childhood, August returns to confront the shadows of his past in hopes of correcting old mistakes. Yet what he discovers is more than a reckoning with others—it’s the unearthing of a side of himself he has long suppressed.

Haunted by warped ideals of love and the damage his choices have caused, August faces what Bawn frames as a metaphorical mirror: a painful, unrelenting reflection of his actions and the people who have borne the brunt of them. Denial gradually gives way to realisation, forcing him into the most difficult confrontation of all—the one with himself.

The ensemble cast—Judeline Charles, Rashad Davis, Bradon Moten, Devion Andrez Coleman, and Dre Matthews—provides grounding and authenticity, their performances amplifying the consequences of August’s spiralling choices. Their presence makes clear that personal collapse is never private; it reverberates outward, leaving scars in its wake.

Bawn’s direction leans into stillness and silence, capturing the unease of moments where truth hovers unspoken. The film asks whether a man defined by mistakes can genuinely change, or whether redemption is only ever an illusion we chase.

Ultimately, As I Am is a stirring, sometimes unsettling journey into the complexities of love, responsibility, and self-forgiveness. It challenges not only August to face his reflection, but invites the audience to consider the parts of themselves they, too, may have long suppressed.

 

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Arlo and the Sea – Movie Review

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Arlo & the Sea – A Quiet Tide of Longing

Arlo and the SeaArlo & the Sea is a short film by Damian Overton and Ruben Russo that was shot on an iPhone 14.

  1. Arlo (played by Russo) is a solitary character who lives in a coastal town. He meets Finn (Paris Moletti), and their interactions are mostly unspoken. The film has a narration by Kieton Beilby, which adds to the mood of the film.
  2. The score, composed by Michael Drew, is melancholic, and the sound design by Daniel Pimm is also notable. The film’s use of the iPhone lens gives the visuals an intimate, raw feel.

I think the film’s strength is in what it doesn’t say. It’s less about a grand romance and more about the simple moments of connection. It’s a short film (12 mins long), but it stays with you.

I would be interested in receiving other people’s observations, views, and comments.

Arlo & the Sea Arlo and the Sea Arlo & the Sea

 

 

Director – Damian Overton
Writer – Damian Overton
Stars – Ruben Russo, Paris Moletti, Kieton Beilby

 

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Kiss Me Softly – Movie Review

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Kiss Me SoftlyIn Anthony Schatteman’s tender 16-minute short Kiss Me Softly, music becomes both a weight of expectation and a pathway to self-discovery. The film follows Jasper (Ezra Fieremans), the son of a well-known schlager singer, who longs not just to inherit the family legacy, but to express it in a way that feels true to himself. It’s a familiar generational clash—tradition against individuality—but Schatteman infuses it with the intimacy of queer awakening.

Fieremans carries Jasper with a mix of quiet restraint and smouldering vulnerability. His performance hints at the complexity of growing up in the shadow of someone else’s stage, while harbouring a desire to step into the spotlight on his terms. Tim Bogaerts offers a grounded counterpoint, bringing warmth and sensitivity to the role of Jasper’s love interest. Their chemistry provides the film’s most affecting moments: unspoken touches, fleeting glances, and the courage found in a kiss.

Marijke Pinoy, as the mother, delivers a gentle but firm portrayal of familial expectation—never villainous, but still bound by tradition. Her presence adds texture to the story, reminding us that pressure often comes from love, even if misplaced.

Visually, the film is sleek and atmospheric, balancing the bright artifice of the schlager world with the softer, more natural palette of Jasper’s private life. Schatteman’s direction avoids melodrama, instead capturing a tone of quiet rebellion. At its heart, Kiss Me Softly is not just about claiming a song, but about claiming identity—the courage to love, to sing, and to exist authentically.Kiss Me Softly Kiss Me Softly

Though short, the film lingers long after its closing note. It’s a love letter to the act of living truthfully, and a reminder that even within the most glittering traditions, there’s always room for a new voice.

Director – Anthony Schatteman
Writer – Anthony Schatteman
Stars – Ezra Fieremans, Tim Bogaerts, Marijke Pinoy

 

 

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Ace [2018] – Movie Review

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  Ace 

In ‘Ace’, a short movie, the director and cast create a quietly charged portrait of longing, fear, and the maddening poetry of unspoken desire. Set against the microcosm of a tight-knit college friendship group, the story follows Ace (Lukas Gage), the reserved newcomer who finds himself drawn—reluctantly, helplessly—to Z (Michael Felix), a longstanding member whose own guardedness mirrors his own.

This is not a film that hurries. Instead, it lingers in the silences between words, in the glance that lasts just a beat too long, in the awkward laughter masking something deeper. Gage gives Ace a vulnerability that feels almost too real at times, while Felix balances the role of Z with a mix of warmth and quiet volatility. The supporting cast, including Giselle Bonilla, Jonathan Lipnicki, and Ariel D. King, anchors the story in a believable Acecamaraderie, their interactions subtly revealing the way friendships can both protect and stifle.

The tension here is not born of melodrama but of stillness—of what isn’t said. As the attraction between Ace and Z simmers, their mutual hesitation becomes the real antagonist. Each moment they avoid acknowledging their truth only deepens the ache for what might be, and the audience is left caught in that same limbo, aching alongside them.

By the time the creditsAce roll,Ace  Ace hasn’t so much resolved as it has gently folded itself into you. It’s a story about connection as much as it is about fear, and about the fragile, human hope that the person you can’t stop thinking about might just be thinking of you too.

 

Director: Jordan Gear

Writer: Jordan Gear

 

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Mrs. McCutcheon – Movie Review

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Review: Mrs. McCutcheon – A Radiant Short About Identity, Friendship, and Daring to Dance
By David McFarlane

Mrs McCutcheon Now and then, a short film comes along that says more in 16 minutes than some features manage in two hours. Mrs. McCutcheon, directed by John Sheedy and co-written with Ben Young, is one such gem — a heartfelt, unapologetic embrace of childhood difference, gender identity, and the bravery it takes to simply be yourself in a world that prefers conformity.

…Hey

This here, is my skin

This here is your skin

You got to be proud of that…

 

At the heart of the film is Tom — or rather, Mrs. McCutcheon — a 10-year-old child who knows, without hesitation, that the name assigned at birth does not reflect who they truly are. In a world that struggles to handle nuance, Mrs. McCutcheon strides forward in floral dresses and honesty, yearning not for attention but for belonging. Alec Golinger’s performance is luminous — tender without being twee, assured without being overly precocious. It’s the kind of portrayal that feels rare: childlike, but deeply wise.

Navigating a new school for the third time, Mrs. McCutcheon is predictably met with the usual cocktail of curiosity, ridicule, and cruelty. But amid the storm stands Trevor, played beautifully by Wesley Patten — a boy who understands what it means to be on the outside. As an Aboriginal child in a predominantly white school, Trevor’s marginalisation quietly mirrors Mrs. McCutcheon’s. Their friendship is the film’s heartbeat: subtle, sturdy, and transformative.

What Mrs. McCutcheon captures so well is the dual truth of childhood — that it can be both wildly cruel and deeply compassionate. The school dance, that almost-mythic rite of passage, becomes a stage for something far greater than a night of awkward swaying and bad punch. Without spoiling the moment, let’s just say the ending is bold, liberating, and quietly revolutionary. It left me teary-eyed and hopeful.

Technically, the film is a joy. Its cinematography bathes the story in warmth and colour, refusing to dull its vibrancy for the sake of “grit.” There’s humour, too — gentle, clever, and never at the expense of its characters. Sheedy and Young never preach, but they do remind us that courage isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s wearing a dress to a school dance and daring the world not to look away.Mrs McCutcheon Mrs McCutcheon

Mrs. McCutcheon is not just a celebration of gender diversity and youthful resilience — it’s a reminder that our differences are not flaws to overcome but truths to be honoured. And in today’s climate, where LGBTQ+ youth still face so many barriers, stories like this aren’t just important. They’re essential.

This award-winning short, lauded across festivals from Melbourne to São Paulo, deserves to be seen, shared, and remembered — not only for what it says, but for how beautifully it says it.

Director

John Sheedy

Writers

Ben Young

John Sheedy

Stars

Alec Golinger

Wesley Patten

Nadine Garner

 

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