E-Mail This Article to a Friend WINTER SOLSTICE

With its first shot of single dad Jim Winters (Anthony LaPaglia) washing dishes, writer/director Josh Sternfeld’s debut feature comes out of the gate like one of those indie movies that in an earlier era would have been an After-School Special or a Movie of the Week. By the time its low-key ending unspools, however, Sternfeld has come to seem a remarkable talent able to create convincing grown-up drama out of nothing. Aaron Stanford and Mark Webber rise to LaPaglia’s level as his mumbly, self-centered sons Gabe and Pete, and Sternfeld has a feel for the gestural language of closed-off suburban defensiveness that’s more impressive than what you find in the nouveau Lev Kuleshov experiments of a Todd Solondz or a Todd Haynes. The pace and the elisions of Winter Solstice are just right, and its cinematography is non-arty and un-Hollywood at the same time. This is a rare thing: a deceptively simple and unassuming film. (93 minutes)