Carting a witch in a cage through the woods is dangerous work!

According to the Chinese calendar, 2011 is officially the year of Nicolas Cage. The first full week of 2011 brings us Season of the Witch, followed close behind by next month’s Drive Angry. In Season of the Witch, Cage plays a crusading knight (yes, really) who finds himself in a mysterious town plagued by disease, believed to have been caused by a witch’s spell. Is Season of the Witch worth seeing? Does Nicolas Cage act as bat-shit crazy as usual, only this time in chainmail? As a service, we answer every question that you could possibly have about Season of the Witch.

Q: How terrible is Season of the Witch?

A: On a scale of one to ten, with ten being very terrible, Season of the Witch is a nine.

Q: How strangely enjoyable is Season of the Witch?

A: On a scale of one to ten, with ten being very strangely enjoyable, Season of the Witch is a ten.

Q: How does Season of the Witch begin?

A: With three women being hanged for suspicion of witchcraft.

Q: Does this opening have anything to do with the rest of the movie?

A: No.

Q: What is the rest of the movie about?

A: The action quickly shifts to Behmen (Cage) and Felson (Ron Pearlman), two legendary knights who are fighting in the crusades.

Q: Do Behmen and Felson enjoy their work?

A: Initially, yes. They often wager on how many kills each can rack up in a particular battle, with the one who kills the least having to pay for the drinks that evening.

Q: How many battles do we see Behmen and Felson fight?

A: We are treated to a montage of battles taking place over a ten-year period inter-spliced with scenes of the two drinking and making out with local wenches.

Q: Do Behmen and Felson have any other friends?

A: It appears that they don’t. Then again, to be fair, I’m assuming the occupation of “Crusades participant” has a relatively high mortality rate, so it may not be worth it to get too close. Eventually, they quit the Crusades.

Q: What was the average lifespan for a human male in the 1300s?

A: Thirty years.

Q: Currently, how old is Nicolas Cage?

A: Today, January 7, is Nicolas Cage’s birthday. He turned 47.

Q: Why do Behmen and Felson quit the Crusades?

A: They’re sent in to kill a city of residents who all turn out to be women and children. After killing all of the women and children, Behmen second-guesses his career choice.

Q: In Season of the Witch, what line did Nicolas Cage scream the loudest like a crazy person?

A: “A benevolent God would not ask such things of men!”

Q: What do Behmen and Felson do after they quit the Crusade?

A: They don’t seem to have much of a plan at all. They wander along long enough until they happen upon a city that has an alarmingly high number of vultures circling overhead. They find a city overrun by the plague. They are soon captured when the local authorities realize they are AWOL knights. They are offered a deal: Their freedom in exchange for transporting a girl who is a suspected witch (Claire Foy) to another city for reasons that seemed far too convoluted for me to care about. Regardless, it had something to do with getting rid of the plague.

Q: Why is this girl suspected of being a witch?

A: For fairly ludicrous reasons like “the plague started about the time this girl showed up.” And for some fairly reasonable reasons like “having the strength of ten men” and “can cause people to think they see their dead relatives.”