Metacritic Movie Ratings
Anna Karenina Reviews

A sample of reviews from critics across the country.

• 100

  out of 100

  The New York TimesA.O. Scott

  Mr. Wright's Anna Karenina is different. It is risky and ambitious enough to count as an act of artistic hubris, and confident enough to triumph on its own slightly - wonderfully - crazy terms.

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• 80

  out of 100

  TimeRichard Corliss

  Knightley embodies Anna as a girlish woman who has never felt erotic love; once smitten, she is raised to heavenly ecstasy before tumbling into the abyss of shame. It's a nervy performance, acutely attuned to the volcanic changes a naive creature must enjoy and endure on her first leap into mad passion. She helps make Anna Karenina an operatic romance worth singing about.

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• 75

  out of 100

  ReelViewsJames Berardinelli

  The best thing that can be said about Wright's immersion into the world of Tolstoy is that it's interesting - a quality not always true of Anna Karenina adaptations. The movie also doesn't feel rushed, successfully capturing more of the novel's secondary stories into its fabric.

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• 70

  out of 100

  VarietyLeslie Felperin

  Setting most of the action in a mocked-up theater emphasizes the performance aspects of the characters' behavior, a strategy enhanced by lead thesp Keira Knightley's willingness to let her neurotic Anna appear less sympathetic than in previous incarnations.

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• 67

  out of 100

  Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum

  In making the radical artistic choice to tell the story as if it were being enacted by players on a stage, Wright falls passionately in love with his own fanciful artifices.

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• 63

  out of 100

  Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert

  This is a sumptuous film - extravagantly staged and photographed, perhaps too much so for its own good. There are times when it is not quite clear if we are looking at characters in a story or players on a stage. Productions can sometimes upstage a story, but when the story is as considerable as Anna Karenina, that can be a miscalculation.

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• 63

  out of 100

  USA TodayClaudia Puig

  Though energetic, daring and gorgeous to behold, this re-imagining of Tolstoy's classic tale lacks a viable sense of passion, holding the characters at arm's length and glossing over social issues.

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• 50

  out of 100

  Los Angeles TimesBetsy Sharkey

  In the end Anna Karenina lets you down - visually stunning, emotionally overwrought, beautifully acted, but not quite right.

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• 50

  out of 100

  The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthy

  Dazzlingly designed and staged in a theatrical setting so as to suggest that the characters are enacting assigned roles in life, this tight and pacy telling of a 900 page-plus novel touches a number of its important bases but lacks emotional depth, moral resonance and the simple ability to allow its rich characters to experience and drink deeply of life.

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• 40

  out of 100

  Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern

  This latest iteration of the Tolstoy classic was clearly the product of audacious thinking, stylishly applied. Still, the thinking was as wrongheaded as it was hollow-hearted. Yet another elaborate production chases its audience away.

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