Season of the Witch (2011)

Tagline: This January raise some hell.

Curiosity: Witches get stitches, courtesy of Nicolas Cage (Wicker Man) and Ron Perlman (Alien Resurrection), as well as a bunch of awesome movies with Guillermo del Toro).

Plot: Behman (Cage) and Felson (Perlman) fight in the crusades for years. Like a decade. But when they’re forced to kill women and/or children this one time during their decade o’ slaughtering, Behman freaks the fuck out and quits. The Church hates defectors, though, so the duo is soon arrested. They are offered a pardon on one condition: Deliver a young girl believed to be a witch (Claire Foy) to a monastery for judgment, in the hopes it will help end the plague ravaging Europe.

CGI wolves come into play at some point.

Thoughts: Season of the Witch is a revision or two from being the best movie of the year. Cage and Perlman turn the movie into a buddy cop picture that just so happens to be set in the Dark Ages, while Foy gets to project such a wide array of states, from predator to prey. The movie doesn’t do much with the “Is she or isn’t she a witch?” angle, but Foy at least makes the procedure bearable with range. Cast-wise, this movie is about as good as it can be.

Where Witch falters is in budget and dialogue. I think that, given another $10 million or so, the fight scenes could pop a little more. The CGI could be crisper. And maybe the same sets wouldn’t seem so obviously re-used as the characters travel from one locale to the next. Script-wise, the movie needs a better sense of humor – Cage and Perlman play off each other really well, but they don’t get much to work with.

The script is perhaps too single-minded in its approach that it forgets to add more flavor, hence the underwhelming dialogue. It also occasionally cuts corners and allows characters to reach conclusions well before they should have. Case in point: The girl uses illusions to trick a guy into falling on the sword of a knight-in-training that I like to call Sir Fuck Up (Robert Sheehan). The goody guys figure out that she did it right away, and they’re right, but if I was in the scene, I would just assume that Sir Fuck Up done fucked up. I can’t see the illusions, but I sure as fuck can numb nuts get all stabby-stabby with his sword. That kid fails so hard so often.

Still, the movie moves a nice pace, has some cool fight scenes, and features a cast that honestly deserves better material. Season of the Witch is sub-Lord of the Rings fare, but it’s still better than most. I can think of three movies named Season of the Witch. This is arguably the best of them.

Reflection: In true LotR fashion, the movie also ends three times before finally ending. Christ.