Season of the Witch (feat. Nicolas Cage)

In 1973, there was released another film with this name, but that didn't matter in 2011. Surely this cinematic spectacle with the director from Gone in 60 Seconds would leave all other films in obscurity. Medieval action adventures were all the rage, except for maybe this one.

In this Season of the Witch, Cage and Ron Perlman play buddy Crusader heroes, the best of their brutal breed. With each battle, whoever killed less than the other had to buy drinks for the night. What fun. Eventually they saw the hypocrisy in killing for God, and became deserters. However, Cage's character still wanted to be a hero, and as chance would have it, the two warriors get a chance to save a witch, or at least have her exorcised.

After some really weak battle scenes, the adventure ensues. There are some fun sword fights with a young cleric with surprising prowess. Then there's a scene with a rickety bridge. Standard fare for this genre. I see how this film seemed like a good idea at the time, but its end product failed on most levels.

I understand that medieval settings are tricky and expensive, but there were a lot of bad shots in this film. In most scenes, there's no sense of space and pacing, as there are rarely more than one or two people in each shot, constantly cutting from one to the next.

The hero boys talk to each other more like badasses in a western and less like the Teutonic knights they should be. With Perlman, there isn't much dialogue. He mostly responds with tough one liners before moving on to smash things. With Season of the Witch, there are no surprises and no immersion.

1. Raising Arizona
2. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
3. Leaving Las Vegas
4. Red Rock West
5. Adaptation
6. Pig
7. Birdy
8. Wild at Heart
9. Joe
10. National Treasure
11. Guarding Tess
12. Snake Eyes
13. Mandy
14. Dog Eat Dog
15. Color Out of Space
16. Mom and Dad
17. World Trade Center
18. Peggy Sue Got Married
19. The Rock
20. Zandalee
21. Prisoners of the Ghostland
22. City of Angels
23. Willy's Wonderland
24. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
25. Bangkok Dangerous
26. Drive Angry
27. Army of One
28. Lord of War
29. Gone in 60 Seconds
30. Matchstick Men
31. Vampire's Kiss
32. Con Air
33. Face/Off
34. Trapped in Paradise
35. The Boy in Blue
36. Honeymoon in Vegas
37. Deadfall
38. Amos and Andrew
39. Moonstruck
40. Tokarev
41. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
42. Knowing
43. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
44. Bringing Out the Dead
45. The Family Man
46. Stolen

47. Season of the Witch

48. It Could Happen to You
49. The Wicker Man
50. 8mm
51. The Frozen Ground
52. Left Behind
53. A Score to Settle
54. Pay the Ghost
55. Primal
56. Dying of the Light
57. Grand Isle
58. Looking Glass
59. Arsenal
60. Between Worlds
61. Ghost Rider
62. Trespass
63. The Humanity Bureau
64. Next
65. The Weather Man
66. 211
67. Fire Birds
68. The Croods

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Somewhere I was given the advice to read the types of things I want to write, or someday get published. So on my quest for a good Fantasy/Romance, I found this one. Obsidian is one of many in its own class of Twilight-types. It's told from the first person of a likeable teenage girl who grudgingly falls into a complicated love affair with a supernatural, hunk of humanoid in the form of a teenage boy.

So this isn't the type of thing I try to write, and I could have read more into the existing reviews. Oh well. I don't consider the experience wasted. Obsidian is about aliens in the mountains of West Virginia, with some connection to the Moth Man. For those of you who don't read fantasy, there are certain rules about Hard Magic and Soft Magic. Armentrout clearly didn't understand these rules. You see, Soft Magic is mysterious and chaotic, and shouldn't be deployed as a means to resolve a story.

Sorry if that's somewhat of a spoiler for those of you who thought this supernatural teen romance was really going to have a tragic ending, only to grow more tragic in its two sequels. The biggest tragedy was the lack of sex in this book.

Between Worlds (feat. Nicolas Cage)

I respect Cage's inclination toward weird and artsy films. Between Worlds is one of those, sort of. It is, but not very much until I'd already decided the movie wasn't very good and that there wasn't much that could save it. I think writer/director/producer Maria Pulera felt the same way. She got halfway through her supernatural thriller and realized it was lame, and thought she could save it by making it as weird as possible, deliberately taking cues for style from Twin Peaks.

In Between Worlds, Cage plays another Joe, a down-on-his-luck trucker with a tragic past. By chance, he finds an innocent woman, Julie, getting strangled in a gas station bathroom. The catch is Julie wanted to be strangled. Getting close to death allows her into the 'other' world, where she can revive her comatose daughter.

So Joe strangles Julie too, but the magic at play goes wrong and bad stuff happens to everyone. The story is more interesting when told in a few sentences than when stretched out over an hour and a half of bad movie. I should have known this movie would be bad when I saw, for no reason at all, a close up of the gas station attendant's butt crack, a shot I found analogous to the quality of this film.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Red Rock West
4. Adaptation
5. Birdy
6. Wild at Heart
7. Joe
8. Dog Eat Dog
9. Color Out of Space
10. Mom and Dad
11. Peggy Sue Got Married
12. Zandalee
13. City of Angels
14. Bangkok Dangerous
15. Drive Angry
16. Lord of War
17. Gone in 60 Seconds
18. Matchstick Men
19. Vampire's Kiss
20. Con Air
21. Face/Off
22. Honeymoon in Vegas
23. Amos and Andrew
24. Moonstruck
25. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
26. Bringing Out the Dead
27. The Family Man
28. It Could Happen to You
29. 8mm
30. Between Worlds
31. Ghost Rider
32. The Humanity Bureau
33. Next
34. The Weather Man
35. 211
36. The Croods