Reviews for this film from our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Magnifico adattamento del romanzo chiave del XIX secolo, Anna Karenina, scritto da Tom Stoppard e filmato da Joe Wright è un trionfo, capace di racchiudere la forza malinconica della grande letteratura russa, l’eleganza della messa in scena teatrale e la magia degli artifici del cinema.
- [New – 7/25] | Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: I never got the sense that Anna and her lover Vronsky were passionately, wildly, madly, and completely in love…just that they were very, very horny.
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: What Wright and his screenwriter Tom Stoppard (who knows a little something about The Theatre) have done is not adapt Tolstoy’s novel so much as they’ve staged it, creating a fluid three-way dialectic between the page, the stage, and the frame. It’s a fresh and ingenious approach, and results in a surprisingly high-spirited picture.
- Jason Bellamy @ The Cooler
- Excerpt: Until it runs off the rails, Joe Wright’s film is full of dazzling sights — including but not limited to Keira Knightley.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Suffers from that most appealing and rarest of flaws: too much ambition.
- Enrique Buchichio @ Cartelera.com.uy [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Joe Wright es el Roland Emmerich del cine de época: sus películas son cada vez más complejas, más elaboradas y cada vez nos importa menos lo que sucede a sus sufridos personajes. Nos llena el ojo, eso sin duda; el suyo es un cine para regocijo de directores de arte y vestuaristas.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Like a modern music video, it’s more about the look and image than it is about the substance behind all of that. Wright gets swept up in his own visual romance and often forgets to tell a cohesive story.
- Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
- Samuel Castro @ Ochoymedio.info [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Jor Wright filma una preciosista versión del clásico ruso, que asombra y deleita a los ojos, pero que carece de la emoción que una obra como esta necesita
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: The novel features one of the most famous endings in history, and Anna Karenina has a sense of propulsion that matches the instrument of that tragedy.
- Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk
- Excerpt: Leo Tolstoy’s nineteenth century classic, Anna Karenina, which details the scandalous and ultimately tragic affair between a married aristocrat and her lover, gets a makeover that is as puzzling as it is fanciful.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Intellectual, overwrought and highly stylized, it’s a superficial spectacle, providing a feast for the eyes but starvation for the soul.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Wright’s choices reorganise the predictable rhythms of the period literary film with boldness, vivacity, and a narrative that drives like an unstoppable machine.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: There is no pretense that we’re getting a realistic depiction of late-19th-century Russia. Director Joe Wright isn’t merely crafting a metaphor about the social structures under which we all live: he’s underscoring the artificiality of cinema itself.
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Josh Larsen @ LarsenOnFilm.com
- Excerpt: There’s no getting around the fact that Johnson is disastrous.
- Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
- Excerpt: Director Joe Wright tackles the tale in a vivid, traditional, yet unconventional manner.
- Piers Marchant @ Sweet Smell of Success
- Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Jason McKiernan @ Next Projection
- Excerpt: …a feverish experience, one that invigorates not only with its story of passion gone mad, but also with its rigorously structured, highly choreographed abstract style, which places the story’s rich emotion in the context of a transparently artificial stage production.
- Ryan McNeil @ The Matinee
- Excerpt: Love is a multifaceted emotion, and one that can be directed towards ideas and works as much as it can be directed at a person. To that end, I believe this film to be a grand labour of love
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: All the world is a stage, literally for Joe Wright’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic novel. Anna Karenina is visually stunning, and perfectly put together, doing a workman-like job of condensing Tolstoy’s 800-page doorstopper into a film running justover two hours. The wonderfully inventive idea of staging the film entirely in a theatre – from the foyer to the rafters to the stage itself – gives Wright the opportunity to showcase his talent as one of the finest working directors today.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Stoppard/Wright have cake on their too-much-like Monty Python faces.
- Tiago Ramos @ Split Screen [Portuguese]
- Jamie S. Rich @ Portland Mercury
- Excerpt: PREDICTION: Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” is going to be the “Speed Racer” of literary adaptations—defended by nerds, derided by other nerds, and baffling to the public at large.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: It’s a remarkable rendering of one of the world’s great love stories.
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: With this version of Anna Karenina, Joe Wright tries but ultimately fails to bring any new revelations about the characters or the story that we haven’t seen already.
- Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Oscar nominations are certain.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite its creativity and originality, Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” packs less of an emotional wallop than previous film versions.
- Andrew Wyatt @ Look / Listen (St. Louis Magazine)
- Excerpt: Ultimately, what’s so gratifying about Wright’s Anna Karenina is not the fact of its stylistic curlicues, but the way that its flourishes buttress the throbbing question at the heart of Tolstoy’s tale: Is it possible to be both good and happy?
- George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd [Greek]
