While even skilled filmmakers would have trouble adapting Tolstoy’s novel in a straightforward form, Wright attempts a book-to-stage-to-film approach and, for the first time in his career, stretched his considerable talent thin.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

The machinery of the music box comes undone in our hands, but the light dancing on the little silver gears is still so beautiful and heartbreaking.

| Jul 2, 2021

The characters, so beautifully drawn by Tolstoy, are severely truncated in the film, functioning as relatively impoverished figures.

| Feb 28, 2021

Anna Karenina is a boldly constructed and beautiful film.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 2, 2020

Enthralling, moving, exhilarating. Majestic and sweeping. The best and most brilliant interpretation of Tolstoy I have ever seen.

| Nov 27, 2019

One has to applaud Joe Wright's interpretation of 'Anna Karenina' which is a play on the Shakespeare adage, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players"

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 31, 2019

All of this calculated design, which plays like an astutely choreographed musical without any discernible music, only mutes our feelings for the roiling, raging passionate affair that's supposed to be transpiring before our eyes.

| Aug 6, 2019

A radiant Keira Knightley brings more depth to Tolstoy's heroine than you would ever expect. An ingenious adaptation, scripted by Tom Stoppard, frames lush visuals with a trompe l'oeil theatrical setting...

| Jul 31, 2019

Its nearly flawless craft is done at the expense of the story rather than in service of it, and that I think is its fatal mistake.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 8, 2019

Anna Karenina drags in the middle and rushes to its ugly end but the sets, the choreography, the glorious costumes and the secondary characters are pieces of a superior film.

| Feb 26, 2019

Heavily flawed and unapologetically indulgent, strong performances from its all-star cast and several sumptuous set-pieces just about set Wright's Anna Karenina aside from the madding crowd of bland costume romps.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2019

The constant flashes Anna has of a train rolling on a track -- an obvious foreshadow of her fate -- are beyond ridiculous.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 20, 2018

Wright has said he did not wish to make 'yet another period drama', and he's achieved this, has explored something new, but at an emotional cost.

| Sep 1, 2018

This Anna Karenina might not be Tolstoy, but it's the next best thing to a Baz Luhrmann extravaganza, and with even better costumes. The conceit is ingenious, the execution breathtaking (or breathless at a minimum).

| Jan 9, 2018

It's far from a perfect film, but Anna Karenina should be praised for its attempt to reinvent the wheel of stuffy costume-clad Masterpiece Theater for the big screen.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2017

At times, the theater-as-life concept creates too much emotional distance from the characters, but the actors give such human, sympathetic performances that even the biggest Anna fans will find themselves hoping for a happier ending.

| Oct 5, 2016

It makes for a wonderfully adventurous adaptation that is at times quite thrilling, but one which too often misses the mark.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 17, 2016

[Lack of] clarity is this slick adaptation's biggest fault.

| Original Score: 5.5/10 | Aug 17, 2014

The look is gorgeous, of course, but seldom has so much aestheticization served so much heartlessness.

| Nov 5, 2013

So can we somehow make a bargain with the film world: no more Anna Kareninas? You're making idiots of yourselves.

| Jun 14, 2013