En tiempo de brujas

Significativamente no tan mala como uno esperaría del «director de la histórica película de clase B 60 segundos con Nico Cage persiguiendo brujas digitales» (¿hay algo que suene peor que esto?). De hecho, es una tontería de clase A, relativamente divertida, con buen elenco, con cierto secreto y un final no muy esperado. Más, en la escena del epílogo, el exterior del glaciar Dachstein al fondo. Una clase mejor que Van Helsing y la obra anterior del director. Y si tuviéramos que dividir estrictamente las películas de Cage en buenas y malas, la pondría todavía junto con las buenas. (20.01.2011)

If I overlook the really poorly done battle at the beginning, I'm willing to call this movie mediocre. I'm happy with the mystery and overall atmosphere. Except that the script was a bit off. I was bored for a while. Then I couldn't stop gaping at what a person is capable of coming up with when they can't think of what’s next. The ending couldn't be taken too seriously after that performance. I feel like the creators overestimated themselves. A weaker 3 stars. (09.09.2011)

An adventurous historical fantasy, thanks to which we now know that the witch hunt organized by the Inquisition was absolutely fine because those monsters allied with the devil were causing damage wherever possible. The devil had his hands full dragging as much evil as possible among the unfortunate Christians, including a devastating epidemic, and who else can stand up to such devastation than the heroic Nicolas Cage accompanied by the thunderous Ron Perlman? Similar productions have a decent budget, and therefore also a decent production design, which in many cases can disguise the fact that the screenplay and the story are just a mishmash that doesn't hold up under closer scrutiny. Quite a few aspects are saved in the case of this film, and, indeed, you don't usually get bored with this kind of film - there's always something moving, sneering, running away, or attacking, exploding, burning - in short, action, special effects, and spectacle. However, if you want the film to work as a whole, you can't turn off your brain and even nitpickingly look for errors in the logic, so it's better to avoid Season of the Witch. Overall impression: 45%. Season of the Witch is exactly the type of film that my nine-year-old son would be enthusiastic about. (20.06.2011)

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)

I almost felt bad at having fun at the expense of a cripple and that I would have bad karma. Season of the Witch is an utterly dysfunctional film; nonsense on top of nonsense, but what else can we expect from historical fantasy, director Dominic Sena and Nic Cage, who in the last years has made one crap after another (with a couple of exceptions)? This digital wannabe darkness didn’t work on me at all. (13.03.2011)