Academy Awards nominee: The Last Station

Michael Hoffman directs this biopic about the final year in the life of Leo Tolstoy, pieced together from the diaries of the various prominent figures who knew him. The story of how it came to the big screen is almost as epic as War and Peace, but 20 years after Jay Parini published his book - and after the death of the original director, Anthony Quinn - The Last Station has made it to the big screen.

Helen Mirren plays Sofya Andreyevna, Tolstoy's wife and muse. She is pitted against her husband's disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), who tries to persuade Tolstoy to sign away the copyrights to his novels for the benefit of the Russian people. Mirren won a best actress award at the Rome Film Festival, but failed to convert her Golden Globes nomination.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAYA.O. Scott, New York Times: "You will certainly see better acting in a great many motion pictures (including from the cast of this one), but it is unlikely you will see more. To say that the actors overdo it would be an understatement. I can't handicap their Oscar chances, but isn't there a scenery-eating contest every summer out on Coney Island?"

Kenneth Turan, LA Times: "The great thing about The Last Station is the way these larger-than-life performances complement each other. These are people who simultaneously love each other and drive each other crazy, and the bond between them, running the gamut from bedroom intimacies to full-out brawls, is one we absolutely believe."

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: "The entire film is a seduction, one that draws us into a vanished world where Count Leo Tolstoy and his wife of 48 years, Countess Sofya, come to joyous, tempestuous life in a matched pair of magnificent performances by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren."

'The Last Station' opens in the UK on February 19. ·