Season of the Witch Review

As an unashamed Nicolas Cage fan, it was heartening to witness the star’s run of form in 2010. Excellent turns in Kick-Ass and Bad Lieutenant (one of my films of the year) proved Cage to be the go-to-guy for unbridled dementia. The damp squib that was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice may not have achieved such heights, but as a 300 pound Texan once said, two out of three ain’t bad. Hopes were high then, that Cage would continue to impress with Season of the Witch.

The film stars Cage and Hellboy himself, Ron Pearlman, as medieval crusaders, who part ways with their comrades after becoming disillusioned by killing in the name of a supposedly benevolent god. They return to a country non-specific, which they find ravaged by plague. The local authorities deem the plague to be the doing of a young girl they have decided is a witch. Under duress, Cage, Pearlman and a selection of others are tasked with escorting the girl to a monastery for her witchcraft to be undone.

Season of the Witch is either enjoyable nonsense or a total dog’s dinner depending on how forgiving you are of cinematic stupidity, how many beers you’ve had and whether or not it’s ten o’ clock on Saturday night and nothing else is on. If you answered, ‘very’, ‘several’ and ‘yes’ to those three conditions, then you will no doubt enjoy Season for the romp it wishes to be. Otherwise, you may struggle to be impressed.

The film is stuffed to the gills with unoriginality – there’s a spot of the previous year’s Sean Bean starrer, Black Death, a dash of The Last Exorcism’s ambiguity (for a while), a vague air of Witchfinder General and Twilight’s naff CGI wolves to be noted in proceedings. There’s a certain ‘seen it all before’ feeling that mars the film throughout – up to and including a ‘cross the rickety rope bridge over the chasm of doom sequence’. Actions set-pieces are met with audience indifference, the special effects are no great shakes and the direction by Dominic Sena (Swordfish, Gone in 60 Seconds) is workman-like. It’s also a shame Cage doesn’t utilise his British accent.

The film does retain some charm in its occasional scares and its better than average cast, which includes the aforementioned Cage and Pearlman, Stephen Graham (This is England, The Damned United), Robert Sheehan (the gobby, immortal one from Misfits) and a cameo from an unrecognisably plague-scarred Christopher Lee. TV’s Claire Foy satisfies as the witch, but other than that, the cast don’t particularly impress, despite their accumulative on-screen charisma. Sheehan is wasted in a straight role – a crime given how natural a comedic performer he is. You keep expecting his earnest altar boy to crack a few unspeakably rude jokes, but to no avail.

Indeed, a healthy dose of humour could have improved the film no end. Whilst Season of the Witch may have pretensions of seriousness (a prevailing theme being the misappropriation of religion), what is required is a more full-blooded boy’s own adventure, with its tongue relocated to its cheek. There are merely two funny moments, one of which was unintentional (wherein Pearlman literally head-butts a minion of Satan – twice). An expansion of the supporting character’s pasts would also have been an improvement – a history between the accused witch and Stephen Campbell Moore’s priest Debelzaq is alluded to, but never elaborated on. Whilst these things would not have made Season of the Witch a classic, they would surely have made it a more memorable and enjoyable film than the stodgy filler that it is.

Astro Boy Review

A top-notch cast lend their voices to this computer animated adaptation of the popular Japanese Manga. In the enormous floating metropolis of Metro City, people coexist with robots and the Earth’s surface is a forgotten, polluted scrap yard. Government scientist Dr Tenma’s young boy-genius son Toby is accidently vaporised in a weapons demonstration. The distraught scientist creates a robot substitute; utilising Toby’s DNA and uploading his late son’s memories into the machine.

At first, Tenma is delighted with the results and attempts to bond with his substitute son. Soon though, Tenma realises that the robot cannot replace Toby and the android flees when he learns of his father’s rejection. Robot Toby, soon to be renamed Astro, travels to the surface, hotly pursued by a government that wants to use his power source for nefarious ends and looks for his place in the world.

The obvious touching point for the story is the tale of Pinocchio, but there are several interesting themes in the film, such as the role of science in society and government, a parent’s loss of a child, the ethics of robotics and the importance of questioning authority. For a children’s film, it touches on some admirably complex issues.

There are lots of things to like about Astro Boy, not least the calibre of its cast, which includes Nic Cage, Bill Nighy, Charlize Theron, Kristen Bell, Samuel L Jackson, Alan Tudyk (of Firefly, Serenity and Dodgeball), Matt Lucas and Donald Sutherland. Freddie Highmore, star of an impressive selection of recent children’s films, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Spiderwick Chronicles and The Golden Compass, voices the eponymous lead.

The animation is overtly polished and slick looking and the characters inhabit a stylised futuristic environment. The production design is impressive; Metro City looks an exciting and lively place, which has clearly been lovingly rendered.

The film does however lack some of the warmth and humour of Pixar’s most recent cinematic outings. A few more jokes could have lightened up the script somewhat. Also, Cora, the girl Astro meets on the surface, has a rather redundant subplot in the search for her own parents, which feels as though it has been either tacked on at the last minute or severely cut for time.

All in all, though, Astro Boy is a reasonably entertaining joy-ride of a film and a rare instance in which a sequel may actually be a welcome and called for occurrence. Along with the admittedly superior Wall E, it would make a good introduction to sci-fi for young kids.

http://www.blogomatic3000.com/2010/05/28/dvd-review-astro-boy/

Bad Lieutenant Review

Werner Herzog has a reputation for being a bit mental. In the past he has cooked and eaten his own shoe after losing a bet. There was a short documentary made about this incident, the snappily-titled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. He was also shot whilst being interviewed by Mark Kermode but insisted on continuing the interview as ‘it was not a significant bullet’. You see? Crazy.

Nicolas Cage is also a rather deranged individual. The evidence? His performance in The Wicker Man remake and the fact that he named his son Kal-El after Superman’s real name. Bonkers. Now, what would happen if we took this pair of fruit-loops and got them to make a film together? Well somebody did and the result is Bad Lieutenant and it’s brilliant.

Cage plays Terence, a cop promoted to lieutenant after some heroics during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately Terence injures himself and gets addicted to his pain medication. Like Dr House dialled up to eleven, his addiction escalates from Vicodin to weed, to coke, to heroin as the film progresses. Terence also has the small issue of a multiple homicide to clear up, sky-rocketing gambling debts to clear, a young witness to protect and his father’s dog to babysit. Eva Mendes, teaming up with Cage once more after 2007’s Ghost Rider, plays Terence’s girlfriend, whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, Frankie.

Cage gives the performance of his life, chewing up the screen and spitting out chunks of dialogue with barely contained fervour. If you thought he was fun as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Cage clearly relished the role and is a joy to watch. Mendes also gives a fine performance and the supporting cast, including Val Kilmer, Xzibit and the ever-amusing bit-parter Jennifer Coolidge, play their parts well.

Bad Lieutenant takes the well trodden hard-boiled cop genre and warps it; Terence skulks around his beat, comically oversized .44 Magnum sticking out of trousers like Harry Callahan’s doped-up younger brother. The generic conventions of renegade cop movie are exaggerated to the point of parody; to say too much would spoil some of the film’s delight, but just ‘til you see Terence threatening witnesses, attempting to rig football matches and the lengths he goes to get his next hit.

One senses that perhaps Herzog would rather be making unhinged natural history documentaries (see Encounters at the End of the World and the mind-blowing insanity of Grizzly Man) and is probably looking to raise some cash to fund his next project. Rather than phoning in the direction however, Herzog makes the film never fearing to skew the genre further out of recognition or stick in a bizarre repeating lizard motif in the scene.

To conclude, Bad Lieutenant is one of the most unexpected and most entertaining films you’re liable to see any time soon. Hats off to the madmen.

http://www.london-student.net/2010/05/29/bad-lieutenant-review/