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Health & Fitness

Movie Review - Winter's Tale

Winter’s Tale *½ (PG-13) Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes the first potential big "date movie" of the season. In this romantic fantasy with supernatural elements, Colin Farrell plays a foundling-turned-thief in 1916 New York, under the tutelage of a brutal gang boss (Russell Crowe) who makes Charles Dickens’ Fagin seem like Mother Teresa. Farrell’s decision to quit his gang of thugs earns him a bullseye on his back, forcing him to flee the city and Crowe’s legion of lackeys. But with the guidance of a magical horse (not kidding) he meets his ONE TRUE LOVE (Jessica Brown Findlay), a lovely, wealthy shut-in with a terminal illness (still not kidding).

Meanwhile Lucifer (no way you’ll believe who plays him until you see it) and Crowe (upping the ante considerably from his strikingly-similar turn as Inspector Javert in Les Miserables) are hell-bent (literally and figuratively) on thwarting the miraculous course of TRUE LOVE, and the threat it somehow poses to their evil plans for the rest of us mere mortals. The dialog is replete with mystical claptrap about lights and stars and universal connectivity, partially to set up the (...wait for it...) time-travel piece of this heavily sweetened pie.

The net result is a gauzy, lyrical goulash of pop-psych, lay physics and mythology that might work for some, but should leave more feeling chilled by the snowy settings that host most of the proceedings. Admittedly, the plot varies from convention in at least one laudable respect, but the farfetched alternative of choice hardly justifies the effort...or its two-hour running time. The best news from this 1970s acid trip with present-day computerized visuals may be that the similarities to Crowe’s Javert gig do not include his singing. (2/14/14)

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Optional bonus questions for post-film discussion:

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1 - Explain Farrell’s character’s thick Irish brogue when he’d never left New York City, and was mostly raised by a Native American?

2 - Is there a causal or karmic link between this casting for Satan and last year’s mega-flop with borderline child abuse (in Hollywood career terms), After Earth?

3 - Why hasn’t the lovely Eva Marie Saint bestowed her gifts on more movies throughout the past couple of decades?

4 - The last time Jennifer Connelly and Russell Crowe were in the same film (A Beautiful Mind) both won Oscars. What, beyond their paychecks, might either gain from appearing in this one?

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