Breath

What starts off as a simple and endearing coming-of-age tale of overcoming your fears and growing into the hobby that you love soon devolves into a tale of pedophilia and auto-erotic asphyxiation. I bet Tim Winton would love to go back to the good ol' '70s.

Pleasant enough but awfully leisurely and laid-back coming of age tale is distinguished by some excellent surf action photography and agreeable performances by its cast (though no-one really sets the world on fire); traverses some surprisingly seedy and discomforting sexual material in the third act, which seems tonally at odds with the rest of the film. Roxburgh and Blake are so criminally underused that it feels like a major subplot may have been excised! An undistinguished debut for Baker.

Australian coming-of-age film showcasing one boy's love of surfing and his subsequent fling with an older woman. There's a lot of missing potential here, specifically the father's storyline and the not-quite-fully-integrated kinky sex. Other than the beautiful ocean photography, there's not much here to set this one apart from the rest of this crowded field.

It was a nice movie. Like Free Willy, but not so fucking pure. Sure it had some uncomfortable parts, but that was the whole theme of the film after all, and it was rather effective. Very well written and filmed.