BEFORE: Just 4 days until Comic-Con, which is just enough time for a 4-movie Nicolas Cage chain that is also sci-fi/comic related. See, everything's going to be just fine. It's kind of weird that Hollywood was so hard up for material a couple years ago that they had to make old Donovan songs into movies, but hey, whatever. They had to pay the electric bill until the "Avengers" movie came out, I totally understand. Linking from "Harry Potter and the whatevers Part 2", Helena Bonham Carter was in no less than FOUR films with Christopher Lee (last seen in "The Man With the Golden Gun") - "Dark Shadows", "Corpse Bride", "Alice in Wonderland" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", so let's go that way.
THE PLOT: 14th-century knights transport a suspected witch to a monastery, where monks deduce her powers could be the source of the Black Plague.
AFTER: I liked the premise where this film started off, namely that the Crusades were ultimately a really bad idea, though it's a bit surprising to suggest that any of its participants could have grasped this concept - that following God and following the Church could be two very different things. That's a very modern idea, to the point where I doubt a film could have gotten away with implying that as recently as a decade ago.
Beyond that, it turns into a pretty obvious quest film, but then there are some nice twists, and I've got no complaints about the effects, which would probably seem more killer if they hadn't followed "Cloverfield" and "Super 8". I'm trying to judge this one on its own merits, but considering how I tend to watch movies, that ship sailed a long time ago.
I guess I'm left struggling with "Nicolas Cage plays a 14th Century Crusader", and I imagine that a lot of other people got hung up on that as well. The cinematography is not great, I realize that they didn't have modern lighting back in the 14th century, but does so much of the film need to be so dark? It's often difficult to tell what's happening because everything is so washed out, or gray on gray. Ah, Wikipedia says the film had "extensive uncredited reshoots by Brett Ratner" - that explains a lot.
Also starring Ron Perlman (last heard in "Tangled"), Claire Foy, Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "Johnny English Reborn"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"), Ulrich Thomsen (last seen in "The World Is Not Enough"), Robert Sheehan, Brian F. O'Byrne.
RATING: 5 out of 10 dead monks
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