Cold Weather

Cold Weather is an expertly shot and mildly intriguing slacker mystery. Aaron Katz is among the more well-regarded filmmakers saddled with the disparaged "mumblecore" label. Unlike some of his peers, he has a discernable visual style, placing a higher priority on how his films look than on dialogue and characterization. With Cold Weather, he puts his own dreamy aesthetic in the service of an amateur detective tale set in the rundown hipster paradise of Portland, Oregon. Cris Lankenau is blandly amiable as Doug, a forensics school dropout living with his more responsible younger sister, Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn). Doug is clearly floundering, and takes a night job at an ice factory, where he meets Carlos (Raúl Castillo), a part-time DJ who explains his own employment there by saying, "I can think and move ice at the same time." When Doug's ex-girlfriend comes to town for a visit and promptly vanishes, Doug, aided by Gail and Carlos, begins a somewhat languorous investigation. The scenes of Doug and Carlos's budding friendship and their blessedly low-pressure labor at the factory are highlights, in part due to Castillo's subdued charisma. The acting is a bit uneven, though, and perhaps as a result, Katz's characterizations seem thin. In this type of film, that can make the difference between memorable and merely pleasant.