It is fitting that 2009's "Angels & Demons" was Akiva Goldsman's last screenplay. For his feature directorial debut, he has made a motion picture involving these very supernatural figures—as well as magical flying horses, fateful miracles, and Lucifer himself as portrayed by a gruff, pierced, fire-and-brimstone-voiced Will Smith (2013's "After Earth"). There is nothing wrong with a movie like "Winter's Tale" striving for heavy fantasy elements in the guise of a love story, but said fancifulness must be convincing and at least make contextual sense. Though Goldman, adapting from the 1983 novel by Mark Helprin, is not lacking in a certain tangible ambition, his finished product is an astounding failure of babbling, sticky-sweet moralizing, inexcusable plot holes and discrepancies, and a central romance that not for a second comes to life. The love between Peter Lake (Colin Farrell) and Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay) is supposed to be the kind of love that breaks the very rules of life, death and the universe at large, and yet their surface-ready relationship falls flat. This is an irreparable problem.
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