Jack Goes Boating

Jack Goes Boating (2010) is a quiet romantic tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. It's the only film Philip Seymour Hoffman ever directed — and he stars in it too.

Jack drives a limo, dreams of a better job and loves reggae enough to start growing his hair into dreadlocks. His friends Clyde and Lucy, a married couple, set him up on a blind date with the shy Connie. Something real grows out of that awkward first meeting. But as the two inch toward each other, the marriage of the people who introduced them starts to come apart. Amy Ryan, John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega round out the cast.

Hoffman adapted Robert Glaudini's stage play, a role he'd once performed himself, and kept its hushed, slightly clumsy register. This is small-scale cinema about working-class New Yorkers who fear closeness and crave it in equal measure — no explosions, no twists, just lived-in scenes and superb acting. Stream Jack Goes Boating online on iFILM.