Roger Ebert burns 'Season of the Witch'

Roger Ebert saves his best reviews for films he can barely stomach. Season
of the Witch is a spectacular review, if only for how very little he cares
for the film despite liking both principle actors, Nic Cage and Ron Perlman.
(I should point out that this film has a sterling 2% fresh rating at Rotten
Tomatoes. Yes, .02.) *(Oh, and if you don't know what Human Centipede is,
you are better off not knowing. Seriously. Like Two Girls / One Cup, once
you know what it is, you can never un-know it. You have been warned. I only
know because I read Roger's zero star review. Even that was too much
knowledge. Trust me on this one.)*

*Season of the Witch*
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110105/REVIEWS/110109993

 * BY ROGER EBERT / * January 5, 2011

 I admit I lost track of the sieges and battles. “Season of the Witch” opens
with a series of helpfully labeled sequences in which desert battles are
fought, cities are sacked, buttresses stormed, redoubts doubted, enclosures
enclosed, and so on. I didn't take notes, but if I had, an example might be,
“The Siege of Synecdoche, April 1, 1239, A.D.”

Anyway, there's a slew of them. Crusaders in armor do battle with fierce
desert tribesmen under the blazing sun. Heads are lopped off and roll across
the plain. Horses whinny, women scream, children flee, warriors are
disemboweled, limbs severed, dogs would bark if there were dogs. The horror!

After about a dozen years of this, we pause for a discussion between the two
hero Crusaders, Behmen (Nicolas
Cage<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Nicolas%20Cage&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>)
and Felson (Ron
Perlman<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Ron%20Perlman&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>).
Yes, Cage and Perlman, so you suspect “Season of the Witch” will not be an
exercise in understatement. “The killing of the women and children must
stop!” they agree. Having arrived at this conclusion after 12 years of rape
and pillage, they do not qualify as quick studies. The comrades abandon the
armies of the Crusades, hit the road and happen across a town somewhere in
the vastness.

They have an excellent reason for ending up here, of all places: Why, this
is the very same town of the pre-title sequence! Where three women were
forced to confess to witchcraft, thrown backward off a bridge with nooses
around their necks, hung dead and then prudently drowned in the river below!
We liberals are earnestly deploring the superstition that forced them to
confess Salem-style, until they spring back up from the dark waters, and,
hey, they actually were witches. Sometimes Glenn Beck is right.

Time has passed since that day (whether the full 12 years, I cannot say),
and Behmen and Felson are quickly assigned to convey a surviving (if
technically dead) witch (Claire Foy) to a distant monastery where there is a
crumbling ancient tome containing the only known incantation that can
exorcise her and bring an end to the Black Plague — so, hey, we're back in
medieval Europe now, specifically Hungary. A possible clue to this film's
mindset as a Buddy Movie is that the Claire Foy character has no name and is
known only as The Girl. Not even The Witch.

I am about out of astonishments for you, but buckle your seat belt for this
one: The director, Dominic
Sena<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Dominic%20Sena&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>,
was inspired by Ingmar Berg man's “The Seventh Seal” (1957), that classic
tale of a knight who returns from the Crusades and encounters Death on the
road. Audiences for “Season of the Witch” may not be thickly larded with
students of “The Seventh Seal,” but those few will be rewarded by sundry
parallels and allusions. Ever since Bergman's “The Virgin Spring” was remade
as “Last House on the Left,” his work has suggested a rich mine for homage.

You know I am a fan of Nic Cage and Ron
Perlman<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/classifieds?category=search1&SearchType=1&q=Ron%20Perlman&Class=%25&FromDate=19150101&ToDate=20111231>(whose
very existence made the “Hellboy” movies possible). Here, like cows,
they devour the scenery, regurgitate it to a second stomach found only in
actors and chew it as cud. It is a noble effort, but I prefer them in their
straight-through Human Centipede mode.


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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