input: Actor Paxton made his directorial debut with this chilling, dark, and competently made thriller about a widowed mechanic (Paxton himself) who ropes his two sons into participating in savage ax murders, claiming that the victims are not human beings at all but "demons", and that they have been selected by God to destroy these "demons". This is all told in flashback by one of the sons, now grown up (Matthew McConaughey) to skeptical FBI agent (Powers Boothe).

Hard to automatically forget this film; better than most serial killer features, it's a twisty and unsettling tale told in straightforward fashion with a bare minimum of cinema gimmicks. Paxton, commendably, barely shows any blood at all until near the end. Well acted by all, especially the two child actors (Jeremy Sumpter of the recent "Peter Pan" and Matt O'Leary of "Spy Kids 2" and "Domestic Disturbance"). The only reason I deducted any points at all is because I can understand that some people may find all of this hard to stomach. In any event, it's an atypical thriller with a decent script.

8/10

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: This is possibly the worst fencing, sword-fighting, movie ever made. That is not just because the so called sports fencing is poor but because the plot, characters are so weak that they've got to throw in a semi nude sex scene and, later, supposed group dancing around a fencing scene in the fencing club trying, I suppose to maintain audience interest. What a waste of F. Murray Abraham's talents. You're better served with overblown swashbuckling movies like Zorro, Scaramouche, anything that has Basil Rathbone as the villain. As a fencer myself I recognize the near impossibility of capturing fencing as a sport on film, but if it ever happens it's got to have fresher, better drawn characters and a plot with more depth.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Make no bones about it. There are a lot of things wrong with this movie. It's cliched the whole way, not very funny, predictable, and illogical. Let's start at the beginning: characters. There's the boring, luckless guy - giving Stiller another notch in his boring, luckless guy belt - the allegedly wild, but in reality just fairly normal, love interest - whom Aniston plays well, but really needed no effort to do so - the fat, jovial friend, and then the assortment of cliches: an annoying daredevil Australian guy, a confident Spanish guy, etc. The storyline: the beginning is slightly unusual, but thereafter goes into the standard any-movie style, with every plot turn as predictable as your average knock-knock joke. The biggest problem was that Stiller's character's "development" really seemed to come from nothing - like your average school play, the writers knew where he started and where he ended, but didn't put enough stock into properly telling the middle bit. Finally, the alleged 'jokes' were nothing but highly watered down versions of standard gross-out humour; there was a regulation chunder scene, sweaty fat men, etc.

In conclusion, the simple fact about this movie is that learning the meaning of the word 'shart' was the only good thing. Hamburg really dished up a dog's dinner here, and the sugar coating of Stiller and Aniston may have lured the viewers, but the taste left at the end was just as rancid.

Final comment: This film may have been dreadful, but Aniston still picked a better between-Friends-seasons movie than Kudrow's odious 'Marci X.'

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Nicolas Roeg ? He directed the classic supernatural thriller DON'T LOOK NOW didn't he ? Strangely the aforementioned movie was broadcast on BBC television at the weekend which did tonight's screening of COLD HEAVEN no favours what so ever .

You see it's impossible not to compare COLD HEAVEN with DON'T LOOK NOW since they both have the same director and the same structure and for the first third of COLD HEAVEN I thought they also had the same plot except a dead husband had been substituted instead of a dead child , in fact my mind was set on this movie revolving around a grief stricken widow seeing her late husband running around Venice wearing a red anorak . This doesn't occur but about one third of the way through the running time there's a massive plot twist and despite being an essential plot twist it's not explained in any great depth . In fact very little is explained in COLD HEAVEN which ruins the movie

People have mentioned the rather poor production values of COLD HEAVEN and it's impossible not to notice them . If I didn't no different I would have thought this was a TVM since it's got a made for television feel to it right down to white capital letters in the title sequence . Roeg also tries to inject art house pretentions via spoken thought processes but again this doesn't help the movie at all . One can't help feeling Roeg should have put all his effort into the plot twists which are totally flat on screen

Cheap production values , disinterested directing and a really bizarre premise and screenplay make for a bad movie

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pos/neg ans:
negative