Anna Karenina

While this is not a story that has ever really drawn much interest from me, in the hands of the innovative Joe Wright it is something more than decent to look at. Keira Knightley, who just gets better and better, is good as the title character, a member of Russian late 19th century society who has an affair with a young Count (the ever reliable Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Jude Law is effective as Anna’s long-suffering husband, as is Olivia Williams as the Count’s annoyed mother. Wright takes an interesting approach, staging much of the movie on an actual theater stage, with characters rarely venturing out of its confines. Whenever I found myself a little bored with the plotting, I was always fascinated by the look of the film. It must be the one-millionth telling of this story, but it’s certainly one of the more original ones.