Review of Winter's Tale (2014) by Conrad T — 07 Mar 2015

A movie that could have been much better than it was. Winter's Tale is full of problems and the way it was made was just all over the place and it left me feeling cold. I have never read the book but after watching the movie, I don't want to take the time to process my brain around everything that happens in it.

The movie treats itself so seriously and it thinks it is so great and is being something so thoughtful when its really not. The romance in the film I thought was bland, I didn't care for it, and in the end it felt pointless to me.

There was a good and evil battle happening on screen and yet, the way Akiva Goldsman directed it was poorly done and was tensionless. There were characters that felt completely pointless like William Hurt's character and the little girl was just there to bring more sappiness to the film.

With the way the plot and story played out, it failed to have me engaged and caring about what was happening on screen and the narrative felt messy and sloppily put together. Jessica Brown Findlay's performance I thought was just dull and bland throughout and it felt like she was only cast for her pretty looks.

I didn't see a character in her and she only stood out as a pretty face. Russell Crowe who I really love as an actor was just really over the top and hammy in this movie and his performance was just laughable.

The Will Smith cameo was really out of place and it takes you right out of the film. Later on in the middle of the movie when we see the old woman and find out she was the little girl in the beginning of the film, that was when it got more unrealistic and questionable.

The little girl in the first half of the movie in 1916 had to be at least 9 or 10 years old and when the film goes to the present in 2014 she had to be 110 years old and she would have died before then and to me, those scenes with the old woman were just sad attempts at more unnecessary drama because they didn't really move the story along in any way.

As the conclusion played out, the movie had already ran out of steam and I didn't care about what was going to happen. Flaws aside, there were things that I really did like and it wasn't a terrible film to me.

Colin Farrell I thought gave a genuine and very good performance and he was better than everybody else. The cinematography was really good and it fit the feeling of the film well. While she was only present in the final half of the movie, Jennifer Connelly gave a good performance as well and I thought she should have been the main love interest instead of Jessica Brown Findlay.

Overall, this wasn't a completely bad movie, but it just had a lot of flaws present and the way the filmmakers made the movie was in a self-indulgent way and there was just no suspense and tension in the good and evil battle happening on screen.