December Boys (2007 film)

Category: Australian coming-of-age drama

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In what was Daniel Radcliffe's first major movie role away from the Harry Potter franchise, we get a story set in the 1960s about four boys on a holiday away from their Catholic orphanage who find themselves with lots of free time in a remote part of Australia and in the vicinity of two young and pretty women - what could possibly go wrong?

I initially wanted to watch this not so much because I appreciate Radcliffe's acting ability (though I definitely think he is good at what he does) but also because this movie was filmed in regional areas of South Australia - the state I grew up in - so I wanted to see how much I could recognise.

But let's run down the plot first.

The plot:

Maps, Misty, Spark and Spit (Daniel Radcliffe, Lee Cormie, Christian Byers and James Fraser) are four adolescent boys staying at a Catholic-run orphange in the middle of the South Australian outback and are grouped together by way of their birth month (hence the term December Boys). As a Christmas gift, the orphanage allows them a holiday getaway thanks to a kind benefactor who stays in a seaside shack at a remote place called Lone Star Cove. 

Dirty Harry (1971 film)

Category: Crime drama

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It's the movie that put Clint Eastwood on the map and gave the western lexicon the phrase "Do you feel lucky, punk?", as well as spawned four sequels - the 1971 Don Siegel-directed masterpiece "Dirty Harry".

Now, filmmaking was a different beast back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so one of the curiosities for me when was to see how things were done "back in the day". It's also quite possible that this is the oldest movie I have reviewed so far for this blog (Editorial note - yes, it is. And by quite a margin).

But I gotta ask - how does this movie rank in 2025 with over 50 years of cinema to contrast it with? Let's find out after a plot recap!

Plot:

The movie starts off with an unnamed woman taking a swim in the sunshine in a pool atop a very tall building in San Francisco. Unbeknownst to her, a sniper is taking up position on an even higher building not too far away and has her in his sight. The sniper pulls the trigger and the woman bleeds out in the swimming pool.