Cold Weather

Sherlock Holmes #2 moves to Portland, Oregon. Cold Weather tells the story of Doug, a failed student of forensic science, who moves back home with no qualifications, but maintains his keen investigative mind. To make a point straight away, this isn't about a modern day Sherlock Holmes, with a brilliant, but troubled mind - that film's been done to death. This film follows the relationships of a group of people, caught up in an unpleasant situation. "Done to Death" comes to mind again, but this film has a fantastic banality to it. Every action, and all dialogue is realistic, no dark overtones, or too bright happy comedic moments.
The film stood up due to the main, straight faced, actors. For when the comedy comes, it's genuinely funny, for me anyway. It comes, not from set pieces, but from common "chit-chat" and will actually make you laugh. Aaron Katz (writer and director) must get a lot of credit for this, but - mainly - Cris Lankenau and Raul Castillo as the comedic heart of the film deliver their lines to perfection. No doubt.
Katz, although a great writer of dialogue, needs to cut back on his transition shots. A lot seemed fairly lengthy and - overall - pointless. I enjoyed his direction in several scenes - he conveyed the slow pace of life, but also Doug's happiness in it very well - I just feel he felt he needed to do a lot more than was necissary. An assumption, I think is unfounded.
Overall, I thought the film was a good watch, and certainly not a waste of time, nor money. The ending was very effective. It made me, immediately, think two distinct things. The first being, what a fitting way to finish such a film. I heard people disgruntled by the finale, but I personally thought it couldn't have been better. The second (and the best thing I can say about any film) was that I thought "Was that 90 minutes? Really?" I didn't at any point think I'd been in the cinema that long, and that's an incredible strength in a film such as this. It held me attention expertly. A fantastic new film, one of my favourites of the year thus far.