Movie Review: "Anna Karenina"

I haven't seen the movie.  I had my doubts right from the beginning when Keira Knightley (why are casting directors so enamored with her, anyway?  I don't get it) was cast as Anna.  After this magnificently critical review, I might not bother going to see this at all.  Here's a bit of it:

Joe Wright’s ornate visuals are easy on the eye, but the wooden, mannered screenplay by verbose playwright Tom Stoppard is jarringly at odds with the neo-realism Tolstoy was aiming for in his novel, a sensation from the day it was published in 1877. His tortured themes of passion, addiction and suicide are now upstaged by lavish sets, costume changes and chandeliers ... Unfortunately, the high-concept approach more closely resembles one of those phony, hysterical, over-produced bores by Baz Luhrmann than anything by Tolstoy. Who, in his right mind, would set out to imitate Baz Luhrmann?

Ouch!  This sounds like the period drama's equivalent of using special effects to overwhelm the story ... like the costume movie's version of Michael Bay!