A New York Winter's Tale

Piffle is a trifle is a nonsense is a long way from interesting. Piffle is what happens to creative souls when they don't get out enough. Piffle is hardly worthy of mention.

A New York Winter's Tale incorporates all of the above, plus Colin Farrell's weird haircut.

In the realm of magic realism love is a shape shifter, a dreamscape, the rainbow's end, and the Devil is a thug in a suit with granite-jawed henchmen who murder with impunity.

Peter Lake (Farrell) is cracking the safe of a newspaper baron (William Hurt) in his New York mansion during the Age of Elegance when every other Irish immigrant is either illegal or a member of the criminal fraternity.

He is disturbed by Beverley (Jessica Brown Findlay), the beautiful daughter of the house.

"What are you doing here?" she asks

"Just robbing the place," he replies.

"The polite thing to do would be to offer you a cup of tea," she says.

She is 21 and has never been kissed on the mouth. She has consumption, although never coughs, and will soon be dead. Or so she believes.

His passion for her is immediate, absolute, obsessive. That is the tale, snow flaked and low baked.

There is more. The dark forces, choreographed by Lucifer (Will Smith) through his demon (Russell Crowe), demands the life of Peter Lake, who has teamed up with a flying horse.

He names the animal "Horse" and believes that everyone has the ability to partake a miracle. Beverley is his miracle. Or so he thinks.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the piffling absurdity of this film, or the incomprehension that actors of genuine quality would have had anything to do with it.