Review of Cold Weather (2010) by Jamie B — 02 Oct 2010

The mix of super-low-budget character drama with a detective story is a brilliant idea, and the film takes full advantage of what it has to work with. The relatively unknown actors give terrific performances, and at no point did I feel like the detective/crime elements were unrealistic in the world created in the first half hour of the film.

Aaron Katz gets excellent, subtle performances from all the actors, and I very much liked seeing a film where the main "relationship" is between a brother and sister. Rarely do films get that relationship right (the only one that comes to mind as a good example is You Can Count on Me).

I also loved the ending of the film, which seemed to anger some of the other members of the audience I saw the film with, but really made the movie memorable for me, and underlined the themes of the film rather than just tying a neat little bow on every plot element like other movies might do.

Probably the best movie I saw at the Milwaukee Film Festival this year.