Express

Anna Karenina

Crit

All the world's a stage--well, a stage and a train station--in Tom Stoppard and Joe Wright's audacious adaptation of Tolstoy. Anna's fate is repeatedly foreshadowed, and indeed, for two-thirds of the 2-plus hours, the film maintains a dizzying locomotive momentum, shifting between stage sets and exteriors (most memorably, a stage door that opens onto a vast, snowy steppe) with such facility that it gives the impression of being a single tracking shot. The staginess that gave me pause in the trailer is in fact grand, gloriously goofy theatricality, which facilitates the conveyance of plot via shorthand.

I get the mixed nature of the reviews--many viewers will be unable or unwilling to go along with the film's central histrionic conceit--but I found it about two clicks shy of brilliant.

Trailers

• The Guilt Trip--Yeah, pairing Seth Rogan and Barbra Streisand as son and mother oughta ensure a popular and critical disaster.
• Safe Haven--Nicholas Sparks novel; need I say more?