Winter's Tale

Writer-director Akiva Goldsman's adaptation of Mark Helprin's 1983 romantic fantasy novel has a cockamamy plot that defies synopsis. Suffice it to say it concerns a seemingly immortal young man (Colin Farrell) and his involvement with a dying heiress in 1916 (Jessica Brown Findlay), and 98 years later, a single mother (Jennifer Connelly), whose daughter is dying of cancer. With a growling Irish villain (Russell Crowe) in hot pursuit across the decades. Oh yeah, and a flying white horse that serves as the hero's equine guardian angel. The movie is spectacularly lousy, burbling with limp, dimwit whimsy and unspeakable dialogue, so deliriously lost in itself that nothing rings true, from the heiress's “fiery red hair” that's really brown to the villain's satanic master played by (no kidding!) Will Smith.