When it comes to streaming options, we are living in an age of abundance. That sounds good, right?

But so much of this content is merely meh. This flood of middling series and movies, this glut of take-it-or-leave-it entertainment can lead to viewing inertia. The search for something truly compelling can feel so exhausting and overwhelming that decisions often get made more by the gravitational pull of the couch than by anything actually happening onscreen.

Amidst this purgatory of TV that’s not quite bad enough to give up but not quite good enough to truly hook you, streaming content can stand out by being great. By being original, intelligent, well-crafted — you know, all that hard stuff.

Or, in what feels like a depressing confirmation of the crappiness of our 21st-century attention economy, it can stand out by being absolutely, excruciatingly awful.

This groundbreaking queer film, now available in a 4K restoration that revives its original black-and-white esthetic, never uses the words “gay” or “homosexual.”

It’s a marvel of subtext, a coming-of-age story in which the relationship between the two main male characters is kept quietly coded.

This discretion is understandable: Winter Kept Us Warm, written and directed by Brandon-born, Winnipeg-raised David Secter, was first released in 1965, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Canada.

In 2025, the film functions as a fascinating historical document, a significant marker in the long journey from the celluloid closet to contemporary queer representation.