New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

For people who never get tired of Nic Cage embarrassing himself: Season of the Witch

Cage is like a drunken uncle who keeps saying that one day soon he’ll get sober and things will be different. Three bottles of whiskey later, he repeats the same statement. At this point, the greatest mystery in our industry is how Cage keeps getting hired for movies. Everyone knows he is broke and unable to refuse any script; mayhap this is his appeal. He lacks the pride that other actors need as a prerequisite in order to perform on camera.

Whatever the reason, Cage’s name affixed to any title should make you do one of two things. You either run away screaming or you sit down and watch, transfixed by the intrinsic comedy of what is effectively a metaphor about Charlie Sheen as a movie career. At several points, Cage has mattered at the box office but in 2011, he is a punchline and nothing more. The proof of this is that Drive Angry is his better received release in the first half of the year. That film was enjoyed by 30% of Rotten Tomatoes critics. That makes Drive Angry the equivalent of Casablanca when compared to Season of the Witch. Only seven out of 102 critics at Rotten Tomatoes give the film a moderate thumbs up. Out of the 20 Top Critics who have seen the film, none enjoyed it. I am not joking here. Season of the Witch is 0% fresh among Rotten Tomatoes Top Critics. That knowledge alone may be enough to entice you into watching the film. It’s awful on an epic scale and if you are someone who enjoys MST3K-ing movies, this is a rare opportunity. See Season of the Witch now before it sweeps the Razzies later this year.

For people who enjoy homances: Rizzoli & Isles: The Complete First Season

The premise of this series is effectively Bones without any of the dudes. A hardass cop and her best friend, a hardass crime lab DNA detective, experience all of the problems women have the world today while they fight crime. This is serial television at its laziest in terms of show plots. It sounds like something The Simpsons would do in jest (poor Cyborganizer), yet this is a real show. I watched a couple of episodes of it to confirm that it was exactly what I expected it to be and it is. Rizzoli & Isles is a procedural that spends an entire episode (less than cleverly entitled I Kissed a Girl) debating whether either of the lead characters is a lesbian before emphatically denying such a possibility. To their credit, the producers of Cagney & Lacey were above such storylines, but the modern take on that theme is sadly generic. The depressing aspect is that Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander are great leads who deserve better stories.

Continued:       1       2       3