rick-f The extremely unattractive style and poor acting abilities of Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky made this movie unbearable to watch. The movie seemed interesting at first, but at least twice in the first sixty minutes I had to stop and ask what the hell is going on here. One minute I am watching Keira with a dude who seems like her husband, then she is checking out Aaron who appears married to a woman old enough to be his mother and then next thing you know he is in bed with Keira in what seemed to be a dream fantasy, but it was real. How does she go from being alone to ending up in bed with this dude? The directing for this film is garbage. This is two hours of my life I want back. Movies like this is why when someone says if your product is bad you should feel bad applies to these low-budget hack directors ripping off movie-goers.The only positive of this film is Jude Law and the camera visuals.

Alicja Furier 'Anna Karenina' (2012) makes sure no one goes back to Leo Tolstoy's classic. The novel, 'Anna Karenina' is an extensive study of love, betrayal, pride and prejudice, to name a few. It's largely made up of interior monologues and smoothly switches between points of view of multiple characters. It touches on the ego and explores timeless dilemmas that stay as relatable today as they once were. Unfortunately, while the book preserves the Russian flair for the romantic without seeming fake, Joe Wright's film does the exact opposite. The flair for the fake burns out any traces of romanticism. Firstly, the film simply does not do justice to the themes it works with. With enough material in the book, the director chose to omit crucial chapters which serve to clarify the characters' decisions and build tension for important narrative twists. Without them, it seems as if Karenina, Vronsky, and Levin were mentally ill as they base their most important life-choices on whims. The screenplay focuses on telling the story of a woman torn between two men. I think I might have seen that before... Without knowing Anna's motives and her nuanced fight with herself and society, the film gets reduced to a love story between a moody, rich diva and a narcissistic soldier - hardly the premise for an epic. The setting hinders that simplistic meaning too. Wright applies a theatrical, over-the-top convention, which drowns the meaning, for the sake of cheap dances and background gimmicks. With everyone dancing, entering different settings, which are being constructed as we watch, the classic turns into a cheap play which relies on distractions to keep the audience's attention. With that, the film seems to be apologizing for its own existence. The over-saturation permeates the acting as well. Every gesture, every sigh, every word of Anna's is exaggerated and ends up insincere. Same goes for Kitty and Dolly. The décor oozes with gold and silver. The costumes, beautiful as they are, look like carefully selected props and not clothes that people lived in. Always creaseless, and starched to the point of standing up on their own, the gowns occupy more space than the actors. The fabrics rustle competing with the soundtrack. All in all, a cringe-worthy spectacle you pray to be over.

Barbouzes We did not expect to, but we loved that film. Actually, we were blown away by it. (Great balls of fire, so many reviewers -sadly- don't seem to get creativity and judge a film after the book. People, hellooo, they are different mediums! We have Tolstoy on one hand writing one heck of a great book, and then we have creative visual artists who have a different way to tell the story.) My take on this film is that it is an absolutely remarkable adaption of a remarkable novel. The creativity in the direction and set design is mind-blowing, and yet never distracts from the story. The story is adapted by Tom Stoppard, by the way, so no wonder this Anna Karenina stylized version manages to get to the heart of the novel's themes, as heavy as the source material might be. The characters absolutely come alive. Add gorgeous visuals, amazingly rich sets (and how they rotate seamlessly around one another: wow) a clever soundtrack, and excellent acting. Poetry in motion with intelligence. I agree that Vronsky is miscast: the actor in that part simply lacks the charisma needed for the viewer to understand Anna Karenina's fatal passion. But what a treat for the eyes and mind this film is, all of it.

justintannerpw1 Gorgeous, imaginative, highly original and emotionally transporting- Joe Wright's brilliant film takes us more deeply into Tolstoy's tragedy than any of the other rather tepid, flat and overtly LITERAL film adaptations. By hanging a theatrical frame on this very melodramatic story he is able to both highlight the inherent soap opera (hang a lantern on it, so to speak) while at the same time giving us much needed emotional distance; we can enjoy the truth of the situations and simultaneously understand their inherent theatricality and this magically frees us to find a deeper connection. By the use of abstraction he is able to move effortlessly from scene to scene- thereby allowing for a brisk yet resonant form of storytelling. The actors are absolutely committed and deliver across the board stunning performances, especially Jude Law, Domhnall Gleeson and a truly transcendent Alicia Vikander. I just finished reading the novel last week and I can say definitively that Joe Wright has mastered not only the tone and voice and emotions of Tolstoy's book but found a way to seamlessly convey the expansiveness of the world as well as the finely wrought intimate details of the smallest exchanges. Bravo to everyone involved, from the costumes, production design, choreography, musical soundtrack and especially Tom Stoppard's absolutely breathtaking screenplay. A real honest to God masterpiece.