Robert J. Maxwell It's atmospherically done but I don't know what it is that gets done.Let me think. Theresa Russell is married to a likable doctor, Mark Harmon, but has been having an affair with the moody James Russo. He's also a doctor. Russell knows how to pick them. Harmon knows nothing of the affair.There is a boating accident and Harmon sustains what is evidently a mortal head wound. Russell is broken up. He was a nice guy. But his body disappears from the hospital. Zip, just like that, after being pronounced DOA.Russo is delayed in his assignation with Russell in picturesque Carmel, California. She enters the motel room, which she assumes to be empty, and, Lo!, there is a confused and amnesic and paranoid Harmon. Russo finally shows up and things get even more twisted.Out of nowhere, Russell announces to a bored priest that she's had a vision of the Virgin Mary, tell her something like, "If you build it, they will come." Well -- not that, but it might as well be, since the message is so much nonsense. By this time she's going nuts and the even the most patient viewer will understand why. Will Patton, now an earnest priest, tries to comfort her and explain that God has dominion over life and death but everything else is our choice. A strange nun has recurring dreams of Russell meeting the Virgin Mary. The nun and Russell go to the place of the vision and something portentous happens but nobody knows what. A visiting priest blesses himself and stares in awe at The Spot, but it looks the same to me as it did before.I swear I'm not making that all up. There's a love triangle and some sort of supernatural dynamics are forced upon it, where it all sits uncomfortably, like a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake. I love Raymond Chandler.This one is exquisitely photographed. It's difficult to turn Point Lobos into a vision of hell but Roeg manages it. Will Patton, my able supporting player in the magnificent "Everybody Wins", is not a beneficent priest. He's a human sidewinder and nothing else. Boy, is he miscast. One glance at those staring eyes and fake grin and you think "pedophile." Theresa Russell does her best but nobody can conquer a confused script like this. Mark Harmon dies, goes crazy, and comes back to life so often it becomes boring.I'd love to recommend this because I admire Nicholas Roeg for some of his earlier work, and for his hiring my little son as an extra in one of his flicks. But my artistic integrity forbids me. Try as he might, he is no Edgar G. Ulmer. But he at least passes Cedric the Entertainer.

lost-in-limbo Marie Davenport is an unfaithful wife who plans to tell her surgeon husband Alex that she is going to leave him for her lover Dr. Daniel Corvin. However strangely enough, her husband is conveniently killed in a boating accident. Then his body disappears from the morgue, and this is when plenty of unusual occurrences start to interrupt Marie's life.Every time I watch a Nicolas Roeg, I always find it hard to put it into words. "Cold Heaven" falls somewhere in the latter end of his work, but still it manages to hold your attention because of its unusually haunting and broad ambiance. The unique handling of the metaphoric premise (lifted off Brian Moore's novel) seems to shift back and forth amongst many different moody fields (thriller, supernatural) to eventually play out like a spiritual journey of religious faith, guilt, fate, and redemption. Everything about it works off one's emotions and seldom thoughts, which go on to feel like a ponderously obsessive dream full of miracles. What starts off like torment due to infidelity can suddenly turn into relief, and it shows love doesn't have any boundaries. What seems like an enigmatic and fractured structure to begin with eventually is answered. But I was less impressed and satisfied with the revelation, and the final 10 minutes or so.Roeg's sensual visual style and steady pace has a sterile, but brooding air that seductively pulls you in. His filming techniques like crosscutting editing of the surreal flashbacks and visions can get jaded, but only adds the blurry nature of what to believe. Even the monologues of Russell's character's inner thoughts are well done and at times can really alienate. Dim composition, shading and lighting is pulled of admirably well in displaying a darkly stark atmosphere. The set pieces provide symbolic traits and within the beautiful images are also eerie currents. The exquisite and ever-changing backdrop that's on show is handsomely framed by Francis Kenny's glossy photography. Stanley Myers' bold music score is a oddly lingering mixture of spicy and light n' breezy cues. The performances are strikingly inspired. Theresa Russell is amazing in a very demanding multi-facet role. Mark Harmon and James are equally fine with complex portrayals. There's also highly capable support in the likes of Will Patton, Julie Carmen, Talia Shire and Seymour Cassel.Not one of his greatest, but an interestingly flawed piece nonetheless.

fedor8 In Roeg's "Don't Look Now", non-believer Sutherland pays the price by getting chopped up, and in this movie former-believer-but-now-non-believer Russell is "shown the way" by God and has her faith in God restored. She "sees the light", so-to-speak. It's a safe bet that Roeg doesn't think much of atheists: "Convert 'em or kill 'em" must be his credo, and also the message in these two films."C.H." is mysterious and quite ambiguous for quite a while, but then, unfortunately, more and more of the mysteriousness makes place for hardcore religious nonsense and the standard Christian stuff regarding the Virgin Mary. The message of the film is crystal-clear: God intervenes in Russell's life by saving her marriage and restoring her faith. Whether this wonderful God also saved Harmon is less certain; after all, the all-powerful Lord decided to kill him in the first place, and so bringing him back to life isn't exactly something that you can call an act of saving. (If you break a man's bicycle on purpose and then repair it, don't expect him to say thanks.) I at first thought that Russell was only imagining Harmon to still be alive (having perhaps stolen the corpse herself or imagined it being stolen), but once Talia Shire (the nun) tells Patton (the priest) in a confession booth that she has been having religious dreams about Russell for a long time, it then became clear that Roeg was going for a strictly by-the-numbers religious message, and not an ambiguous one free for interpretation.Roeg is no intellectual. I assume that the chances are very slim indeed that Roeg ever did or will ever make a film in which a God-fearing believer becomes a non-believer. That much is certain.I liked the thing Patton said to Russell at one point, and its obvious implications: he told her that Satan doesn't have the power over life and death, but that only God has it. Translation/Conclusion: Satan cannot do real evil, only God can. Now what kind of a God are they all worshiping then? They should pray that Satan takes over the Heavens and somehow gets rid of this God, which would mean that God wouldn't have the power anymore to cause all the damage that he does – using this logic. But then we'd have over-population. It's a strange dilemma...Okay, so I am poking a bit of fun at the film's religious aspects and all the illogic and absurdity that they tag along with them, but the film is still solid. It would have been better had it not sought to hide like a coward in the religious corner, using tired old clichés like frantic nuns, philosophical priests, and that mighty thunder in the sky that seems to be an oft-employed method by God of relaying messages to his fearful flock.

Theo Robertson 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