Some Early Reviews for Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is due to be released on September 7th in the UK and here are a few of the early reviews.

The Mirror had glowing comments:

The film is blessed with a terrific cast. Jude Law is impressive as Anna’s proud husband Karenin; Aaron Taylor-Johnson (all blond hair and twirling moustache) ­is ­suitably dashing as Vronsky, Matthew ­Macfadyen is a ­comedy delight as plump but philandering Oblonsky and Kelly ­Macdonald sweetly dowdy as his loving but frustrated wife.

With its beautiful cinematography and costumes, bold choreography and perfectly judged performances, it’s a real ­success.

 Digital Spy was a harsher critic: 

Bizarrely, there's a chirpy start to this famously tragic tale as brother Stiva (Matthew Macfadyen) anticipates Anna's arrival on a visit to Moscow from St Petersburg, a sequence that's so heavily choreographed you'll expect him to skip forth and burst into song. And yet, there is disharmony in the house thanks to his constant cheating on wife Dolly (Kelly Macdonald).

His [Joe Wright] film does tell a story of great love, but he could have expressed the same sentiment with less smoke and a handheld mirror.

Indie Wire:

Matthew MacFayden is enjoyably broad, a world away from his Mr. Darcy, as Oblonsky, threatening, but never quite managing to, tip into caricature, and his approach pays off beautifully with a single heartbreaking shot near the end.

We suspect, all in all, that the film is going to divide people enormously. There'll be some who get turned off the concept from the start and never get on board. And that's fine, but we hope they don't miss the pleasures the film contains as a result -- McGarvey's spectacular camerawork, Dario Marianelli's handsome score, weaving niftily between being diagetic and non-diagetic and the intelligence and intimacy of the performances. As for ourselves, we found it both fascinatingly theatrical and thrillingly cinematic, a picture that's lingered on our minds more than we expected, and while not quite an unreserved cause for celebration, it's a film that we cherish despite its flaws. [B+]