‘Winter’s Tale’ Review: Okay, Who Spiked My Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee?

What to make of a time-spanning romance featuring Lucifer in a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt, a flying horse named Deus Ex Machina, and a woman killed by a too-warm penis? What indeed. Winter’s Tale opens in present day New York City and stays there for a full three minutes before jumping back to 1895 and a ship filled with hopeful immigrants. One couple is turned away, but desperate for their infant son’s future they lower him into the water and toss his fate to the waves. Quick cut to 21 years later, and Peter Lake (Colin Farrell) is a petty thief on the ru- Yes. Colin Farrell plays a 21 year-old. He’s on the run from Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), a demonic mob boss intent on killing Peter for some unknown slight, but before heading out of town Peter makes time for one last score at the home of newspaper editor Isaac Penn (William Hurt). What he doesn’t know is that Penn’s deathly ill but still gorgeous daughter, Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay), is tickling the ivories inside, and one admittedly well-written meet-cute later the beginning of a great love has stirred in their loins and in the air between them. Poor pronoun reference there, but it’s not inaccurate. Unfortunately, their romance seems doomed from the start. Between the consumption (aka tuberculosis) threatening to burn up her insides, Pearly’s promise of murder sanctioned by his boss Lucifer, and a seemingly endless string of nonsensical narration concerning stars, light, and the “great dance […]

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