Season of the Witch

Dominic Sena didn't disappoint, directing a European medieval film in the quintessential American way, throwing authenticity out the window. I half-expected Nicholas Cage to dazzle the enemy in the decisive moment of the final duel by whipping out a lightsaber, but alas, he didn't, needlessly disrupting an otherwise smooth flow of various nonsense. It was genuinely terrible, from the initial departure from the army to the final CGI mess, but I'll begrudgingly leave one star because I was decently entertained and had a good laugh at times. So what if it was unintended? I can laugh whenever I want. But seriously, it felt like a parody (blocking arrows with a sword at a distance of five meters, the cardinal dying of plague was clearly in the third stage of syphilis, etc.). Oh well. / Lesson learned: If a film character starts planning a bright future, it's time to bid them farewell. R.I.P. (19/07/2022)

Season of the Witch is significantly less disastrous than one would expect from a “period B-movie from the director of Gone in Sixty Seconds starring Nick Cage chasing digital witches” (could anything sound worse?). But it’s actually a grade-A, relatively entertaining and well-cast dumb flick with a veil of mystery and not a completely predictable ending. Plus, you’ll see the exterior of the Austrian's Dachstein glacier in the background of the epilogue scene. It is a class better than Van Helsing and Dominic Sena’s previous movie, Whiteout. And if we were to strictly divide Cage’s films into good and bad, I would label this one “good” with both eyes closed. (20/01/2011)

Excellent visuals and a very likeable cast. The wisecracking Perlman is second to none, Cage's leading moral role fits well in this case, and Robert Sheehan shows he can play something other than the total moron in Misfits. I honestly wasn't expecting anything at all and ended up being pleasantly surprised. Dominic Sena is obviously not any miracle as a director, but in this case he’s outdone himself and managed to create some great scenes and evoke a decent period atmosphere. The story is linear and predictable, but by no means boring, and with its appealing running time, it slips by like water. One of the better B-movies of 2011, and a really great diversion on a decent level. (30/12/2011)

A decent film beyond expectations, which mostly lacks funding and the epicness that comes with it. The actors were good (I keep telling you, don't write off Cage), the music was good, some scenes (the opening, the wolves) were almost perfect, the final digi looked better than Solomon Kane's, and I was pleased with "his" likeness, which seemed to come out of period drawings. The screenplay benefited nicely from the interplay between Cage and Perlman, who were given the right “guy" lines, but otherwise it was an unremarkable ordinary fantasy road movie that ran out of steam towards the end. I also give three and a half stars for Christopher Lee's bark. (07/06/2011)

A lobotomy at which the more hardened may laugh, but I refuse to wallow in "guilty-pleasure" intoxication because it offended me from the first digital battle to the end that comes from the gaming industry. I don't mind Nick Cage’s medieval knight, as he’s backed up by the badass Perlman and Thomsen, but I was annoyed by Sena's attempt to be cool at any cost. It's obvious that he blew his modest budget at the beginning, so there’s mostly blabber going on, then it's digital wolves, and you want to turn back time and let the bridge fall a few seconds earlier. This is the first film this year that made me feel ashamed. (17/03/2011)