COLD OUTSIDE

First Snow

First-time director Mark Fergus’ slow-moving drama, First Snow, plays out like a vivid short story packed with shadowy characters and terse, involving scenes. Its central gimmick recalls the silly contrivances of EC Comics, with hints of supernatural elements providing a platform for a series of dreamy vignettes (appropriately, Fergus is one of the scribes on Marvel’s developing Iron Man feature). The filmmaker makes it work mainly by staying true to the seedy protagonist, a narrow-minded money-hound named Jimmy Starks (Guy Pearce) whose flimsy confidence slowly melts around him.

Read the rest of the review in the New York Press...