Anna Karenina

After directing Keira Knightley in Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, Joe Wright casts her in this left-field adaptation of Tolstoy's epic novel. Knightley does a commendable job of softening the hard edges of the imprudent Russian ingénue married off at 18 to Jude Law's older statesman. She risks her position in 19th-century society and - more controversially - her relationship with their young son to indulge in an affair with the wilful Count Vronsky (a typically moody Aaron Taylor-Johnson). And yet she's upstaged by her director, who draws attention to himself with every frame. There were incongruous camera moves in Pride & Prejudice and flashes of surrealism in Atonement, but Wright lays it on thick here, turning this tragedy into a lavish musical - just without the song and dance numbers. Clearly, the artifice is a symbol for the hypocrisy of the upper classes, but it also trivialises the suffering of Karenina in her attempts to overcome it. The end result is a beautiful bore.