Review: Some Days Are Better Than Others

And some movies from the Pacific Northwest are better than others. Aaron Katz’s intermittently sublime “Cold Weather” may have spoiled me for other modest productions shot under the photogenically heavy-lidded skies of cities like Portland that digital video cannot get enough of. Matt McCormick’s “Some Days Are Better Than Others,” lovingly framed and lit when it ventures out-of-doors, with much offhand down-at-mouth beauty, traffics in a tale of small-city living that starts at sad, grows sadder. It’s a depressive, enervated self-satire with dialogue that seeks to be pretentious but only perks up when it attains the risible: “Hey, it’s your turn to take out the recyclables this week.” Enter a world of characters shuttling through vintage stores, animal shelters, extended roommate breakfasts, brooding seaside dawns, musings about never, ever making $20 a hour. Its most heartfelt and science-fiction-ish element is when a character is determined to connect and deletes her account from something called “Mumble Mail.” Account deleted. On account of twee. Almost any part of the score would suit a montage of wrists being slowly slit. With Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney), James Mercer, Renee Roman Nose, Andrew Dickson, David Wodehouse. 93m. (Ray Pride)

“Some Days Are Better Than Others” opens Friday at Facets. The film’s SXSW trailer is below.