Season of the Witch Article Rating

Season of the Witch
Article Rating

'Season of the Witch' review: Nicolas Cage conjures up another undignified performance

Joe Neumaier

Friday, January 7th 2011, 4:00 AM
'Season of the Witch' stars (from l.) Stephen Campbell Moore, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman.
Endrenyi/AP
'Season of the Witch' stars (from l.) Stephen Campbell Moore, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman.
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Two knights must deliver a witch to a monastery for de-possession. With Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman. Director: Dominic Sena. (1:38). PG-13: Violence. At area theaters.

This is getting embarrassing.

We all know what Nicolas Cage has become onscreen -- wild-haired, out-there, middle-aged crazy 98% of the time; murky, mysterious, weird-but-watchable the other 2%.

Why? Some fans claim his off-screen tax troubles have forced the oddball Oscar-winner ("Leaving Las Vegas," remember?) into new levels of, uh, Caginess. But many think this was where the man was headed anyway.

Still ... "Season of the Witch"? Really?

It's likely Cage wanted to wear a tunic and read incantations from dusty books and fight demons with swords, and that's in here; it is January, after all, and Hollywood's plumb out of true grit and kings' speeches. Time for dumb fun.

Except that rather than elevating this wanna-be Hammer horror flick, Cage somehow lowers its quality.

As you'd expect in a movie called "Season of the Witch" -- except, of course, for "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" -- there's a witch. Unnamed but plug-ugly, the enchantress is hung for her ways in the year 1235. She apparently returns as a young girl a century later, just as wisecracking, best-bud Crusaders Behmen (Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) find a Plague-plagued village.

The local priest blames the girl for bringing the Black Death to their town, so Behmen and Felson, deserters from the church's army, take the job of getting her to a monastery. There, an ancient tome known only to a handful of monks can de-witchify her and save humanity from bulbous-faced destruction and a bad, hacking cough.

There are fellow travelers, including a merchant-turned-guide and a sneaky priest, but they're really just bodies to sacrifice to the winged devil that is the story's big prize. Director Dominic Sena ("Gone in Sixty Seconds" -- which is sadly a movie title, not the running time here) makes sure the path to that monastery is filled with howls and fog and inane episodic distractions.

At least "Witch" offers Perlman's easy, early-hominid charm, and a semi-suspenseful rickety-bridge scene.

The real cliff-hanger, though, remains Cage's career. How much indignity can it take? Surely he can find "Matchstick Men"-like scripts with more trickery than this, or "Adaptation"-ish roles that require comic edge. You don't need an eye of newt and toe of frog to see that the paycheck roles aren't paying off the way they should. (Next up: February's "Drive Angry.")

That is, unless filling a filmography with this kind of hell-broth is the ultimate goal.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2011/01/07/2011-01-07_season_of_the_witch_review_nicolas_cage_conjures_up_another_undignified_performa.html#ixzz1ALMBl0V8