This movie is in love with female victimization.
The Hours (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:185
Fresh:149
Rotten:36
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: The movie may be a downer, but it packs an emotional wallop. Some fine acting on display here.
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Based on the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham, THE HOURS employs Virginia Woolf's classic novel and central character, MRS. DALLOWAY, as its foundation and inspiration. Spanning... Based on the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham, THE HOURS employs Virginia Woolf's classic novel and central character, MRS. DALLOWAY, as its foundation and inspiration. Spanning three different eras, during one day, the film focuses on the parallel lives of three women joined in their depression, alienation, and search for love. Nicole Kidman, wearing a prosthetic nose, is virtually unrecognizable as the tortured writer Virginia Woolf whose ongoing battle with mental illness eventually led to her tragic suicide in 1941. The film begins with the moment of her suicide and flashes back on her life and work as she crafted her most memorable character, Clarissa Dalloway, in 1923. In 1950's California suburbia another woman, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), struggles with alienation and depression. Trapped by her clinging young son and an adoring husband whom she does not love, the desperate woman tries to prepare for her husband's birthday but cannot stop reading MRS. DALLOWAY. Finally, in modern day Manhattan, Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep), a lesbian who lives with her lover (Allison Janney) and her daughter (Claire Danes), struggles to prepare a party for her ex-husband (Ed Harris) who is dying of AIDS. Director Stephen Daltry uses beautiful overlapping editing to sew the women's interwoven stories seamlessly together. At the core of this profoundly moving film is the trio of award-winning actresses who grace the screen with their bold and awe-inspiring performances. [More]
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Toni Collette
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, John C. Reilly, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Dillane
Director: Stephen Daldry
Director: Stephen Daldry
Screenwriter: David Hare
Producer: Robert Fox, Scott Rudin
Composer: Philip Glass
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Reviews for The Hours
With the prospect of films like Kangaroo Jack about to burst across America’s winter movie screens it's a pleasure to have a film like The Hours as an alternative.
Deft editing and a toney cast can't disguise this flashy exercise in self-indulgence.
An astonishing piece of work and an actors' dream, about lives that feel real and characters that are anything but superficial in their wants.
A well-made and thought-provoking examination of depression, regret and acceptance, or not, of one's life and being.
It's a collection of elusive moments and connections, a musing on nothing less than the meaning of life itself.
You don't just love the movie for its structure but for the haunted people in it, making each other miserable, but forcing each other to face who they are.
It would be all too precious to watch except for the brilliant performances, which make it too wonderful not to watch.
Far from a bad film, and at least two of its central trio of performances provide moments of disarming grace, but don't be surprised if a whiff of self-congratulation emanates from the screen.
The hours pass by slowly when a movie has this much heaviness to it, but the cast make it an emotional train wreck worth watching.
A big-budget/all-star movie as unblinkingly pure as The Hours is a distinct rarity, and an event.
So achingly earnest in its desire to do well by its subjects that it struggles to keep them on the very pedestal they wish to climb down from.
just as we’re settling in, beginning to understand how the gentle rocking motion of the script is describing some greater arc, here comes the Nicole Kidman again, acting the hell out of Virginia Woolf, dragging that mad hoot of a honker around like it’s
A viewer can forget about Woolf, not care a fig about Cunningham, and just bathe -- soak, more like -- in the voluptuous sadnesses of Mss. Woolf, Brown, and Vaughan, delineated with such refinement by Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep.
Ultimately, "The Hours" just beats us over the head one too many times with its depressing message.
A potent illustration of the profound impact words and ideas can have, even across decades and disparate milieux.
Latest News for The Hours
May 05, 2008:
Kidman tipped to play Dusty ![]()
Nicole Kidman has been tapped to play the bee-hived chanteuse, Dusty Springfield, in a biopic to be written by Michael Cunningham, who she worked with for The Hours. More...
June 21, 2006:
Natalie Portman Aboard "Boleyn" and "Kavalier"
The universally-adored and very cute Natalie Portman seems to have a pretty high profile pair of freshly-inked contracts. On one hand, she'll be starring in a historical drama... More...
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