I have a love-hate relationship with my fishtank.

I imagine its inhabitants have a hate-hate relationship with me, since most of them end up dead, either for no good reason or because I trapped them in an enclosed space with a puffer who turned out to be a cannibalistic serial killer. That was traumatizing. Again, not as traumatizing as it must have been for the fish, who were mostly reduced to spines and some stringy white stuff, but that doesn't mean it was all peaches and cream for me, either.

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

But it was pretty great when the puffer puffed. Or how, despite all my attempts to thwart the fiddler crab's escape, every single time I came home from work I'd find him sitting on top of the tank. They do some terrible, gross things, but they do a lot of funny stuff, too. This is pretty much how I feel about the work of Nicolas Cage. Whatever he's up to, it's usually worth watching, even when it's as bad as Season of the Witch.

Cage and Ron Perlman have fought for the Crusades for years, but when Cage sees his fellow troops ordered to kill innocents, the two soldiers strike out on their own. In a plague-ravaged land, they're arrested as deserters -- and the penalty is death.

The local church gives them a choice: they've captured a young woman they believe is the witch who's responsible for the curse that's plagued them. If Cage and Perlman will escort the girl to her trial at a monastery, all the charges against them will be dropped.

Here's how Season of the Witch establishes Cage and Perlman are battle-hardened badasses: first, there's a clip of them joking around as they chop a lot of guys into infidel sausage. Then there's another two or three clips of them chopping a bunch of other guys, but one scene's at night. If your imagination's filling in this montage with relevant, interesting details, stop now. All they do is stab a lot of people and get yelled at to stab harder.

That's about as artful as Season of the Witch gets. It's no stranger to cliches, either: while Cage is a fellow so honorable you'd trust him with the One Ring even if it were made of blueberry pie, Perlman, against all odds, is more of a rough-and-tumble rogue. This is going to revolutionize the way we think about buddy-soldiers. We're talking about a pairing on par with partnering a white cop with a black cop.

Admittedly, they've got some chemistry together. And it takes a certain skill to deliver Bragi F. Schut's lines without dying of a massive overdose of cheesy. (This closely resembles a heart attack, but the corpse is spreadable on whole wheat crackers.)

Bragi and director Dominic Sena don't do any better establishing the rules of their world. Witches exist (though it's long unclear whether the escorted girl is one), but we have no way of knowing what they're capable of, how you detect or kill one, or even whether they are in fact ducks. The supernatural finale ends up arbitrary and stakes-free.

Yet despite the fact it is a big fat sack of crap, I do not hate Season of the Witch. Its plot, while dully simple, is at least coherent. And if you're the type who enjoys seeing actors attempt to preserve their dignity despite the hokey medieval dialogue, oh, is there much hokey medieval dialogue. It's the kind of enjoyably crummy B-movie you'll probably have to watch by yourself.

Grade: D+