Rating: 
Summary: What A Shame!!!
Review: What a shame when an all star cast meet and achieve nothing! It is not because they are bad in any way, shape, or form, but because the story does not mean alot to %99.999999 of normal people.
You have to be from a psychologically defected familly to relate to "this so called movie".
The story is very simple, 3 females suffering from depression in 3 different periods of time each with minor differnce in the environment.
"Suicide, homosexuality, and social communication" seems to be the high notes of the movie. Even no adaptive/positive behavior is shown or contemplated in the whole script.
This is what I call a "Dark Movie" that should be viewed with the tv screen off to achive the best result.
Rating: 
Summary: Wife hated it!
Review: I didn't mind this one, but my wife could not stand it. The critics liked it, but not our household. www.jafguitar.com
Rating: 
Summary: Seamless connections...
Review: When sitting down to review this superb film, at first the task proved to be problematic. This picture is an adaptation of a prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham, which is loosely based on one of the great modernist novels of the last century, Mrs. Dalloway. In many respects, too, the film touches on the author's life, Virginia Woolf. The singular genius of the film is its fundamental structure, in terms of running all the aforementioned pieces and their themes in tandem. This is extremely clever because this was Woolf's intent when writing Mrs. Dalloway: connecting apparently disparate people and themes in a coalescent manner. Virginia Woolf was an experimental novelist, who successfully used the literary technique known as stream of consciousness. Breaking away from the conventional realist or naturalist forms used predominately in the 19th century, where the narrative was carried along by way of external action, this new technique moved the action into the characters mind, known as interior monologue. In Mrs Dalloway, we are invited into Clarice's mind, gaining access to her memories of childhood and relationships, and at the same time, her life parallels Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran on the edge of insanity. Their lives become interconnected on a level of thought and time. In ~The Hours~ the lives of three women, existing in three different time periods, run parallel to each other, all searching for meaning, all connected on levels of thought, circumstance and time, all in one seamless narrative. In many films the majority of burden is on the main character, the lead actor, to ensure the project is a success. As there are three distinct narratives in this film, and three leading actors, it would have only taken one weak performance to turn this film into a disaster. I believe the producers knew this and managed to hire probably the top three female actors in Hollywood. Only one received the Oscar, Nicole Kidman, in the role of Virginia Woolf. However, Meryle Streep as Clarisa Vaughn and Julian Moore as Laura Brown put in outstanding performances, who more than deserved this recognition as well. This is a complicated film but a beautiful one with a haunting soundtrack by Phillip Glass, which demands to be viewed more than once to discover its many nuances, allusions and their connections.
Rating:
Summary: Boooorrrrrriiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggg!
Review: Lots of big names but very slow, boring and depressing. Simple plot that's over expanded. I had big expectations being bombarded with publicity for this movie. It's a thorough waste of my time!!
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular
Review: This is a spectacular movie in which we get the opportunity to see acting by some of the best actresses of our time. The film asks how is it possible for an individual to exercise his/her freedom in order to break free from a situation that stifles creative growth. The surge into freedom is never black and white and is never penalty-free. .... for example, in order to survive the bland, de-humanizing cliches of the '50ies "family life" the Moore character had to abandon her family and child. Subsumed in the main three stories, which only come together at the end (in a masterful stroke of screen-writing and directing) are several metaphorical streams opening (but never closing) the questions of intimacy, creative spirit and (emotional, physical and creative) survival. Daldry ties together the three narrative threads by using parallel montage, sometimes by using the same motives or just the color of the clothes. This is a deeply inspiring film, a true work of art. It shows little compromise with the Lowest Common Denominator. I think that the fact that the movie and its actors were side-stepped during Oscar finals says much about this commercialized and artistically irrelevant farce.
Rating:
Summary: 3 Actresses deserve the academy award!
Review: I felt Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep all deserved the academy award. This movie is so excellant, and it stays with you.
Its about three women, Nicole Kidman portraying Virgina Wolfe, Julianne Moore portraying a mother who wants to start a new life and is feeling overwhelmed, and meryl streep who is getting married but spends alot of her time taking care of a sick friend, and its starting to take its toll on her. this movie is beautifully filmed, acted and scored. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Life Layer upon Layer Interwoven all in Hours
Review: "The Hours" is indeed a powerful film. The power trio of Kidman, Moore, and Streep turn in a subtly nuanced coup d' grace of a performance that to watch is to sit on the sidelines of a Super Bowl of an event of acting. "The Hours" is a skillful tale of interwoven lives threaded together through different ages and times; held together by a concept, an idea, and a tale--Virginia Wolff's "Mrs. Dalloway." Each life is somewhat affected by the other as Virginia Wolff unconsciously pulls the strings in the writing of a story. When Kidman's character proclaims, "We still have to decide the fate of our heroine (largely paraphrased, mind you)," as the audience, we sit with baited breath knowing the stroke of her pen will determine the fate of Moore's post-WWII houswife's life and Streep's 2001 New York City socialite life. The screenplay and director's editing are quite a notch above creative genius. In the opening scenes there are flowers and the scenes switches effortlessly from one of the woman's life to the other as they prepare for the looming weight of a fateful day each with flowers in the mix. The effect is that we suspend time and follow the stories without conscious thought stepping back and forth. The three stories in effect become one, held together by the overriding sense that they are not happy lives, they are not lives of freedom, but lives subservient to the will of others. One of the best features of this DVD is the voice over narrative of Streep, Moore, and Kidman. It is illuminating to hear their individual approach to acting and their experiences making this film. It is like an acting class taught by the most prominent acting greats of our times. It was very interesting to hear that Streep was proud that she was the only actress that gets up in the morning looking like she had been asleep. She is proud of this fact and points it out. That's a film perspective we didn't get in past film classics and makes the DVD purchase worth the price of admission. Don't miss out on the "Hours." Surprisingly enough, it is life affirming but only in a subtle way.
Rating:
Summary: Correcting disinformation from Connecticut . . .
Review: The reviewer below from Wallingford, CT stated The Hours was one of the worst movies he had ever seen. One has to wonder, though, just how much of it he actually saw. He says it's about "3 lesbians . . . who commit suicide." Leaving aside the issue of whether or not "lesbian" is the most appropriate way to describe two of the three main characters, this supposed plot summary is just plain false. Only ONE of the women commits suicide -- the one who really existed in real life, and did indeed really commit suicide, Virginia Woolf. And, guess what, she does it in the first five minutes of the movie. It would appear that not only did the Wallingford reviewer "know from the first 5 minutes" that this movie "was going to suck," but that he didn't bother to watch beyond that initial 5. If he had, he might have seen (the rest of) one of the most extraordinary American/British movies of the past decade.
Rating:
Summary: One of the worst movies I have ever seen
Review: My wife purchased this movie on a recomendation from a friend. This movie was long, dull, and depressing. It's about 3 lesbians from different time periods who commit suicide? It goes back and forth between the women and thier dull lives. I knew from the first 5 minutes it was going to suck but my wife made me sit through this garbage. At the end we both were shocked at how displeasurable the experience was. I am baffled at how anyone could enjoy this.
Rating: 
Summary: A great weeper with three great performances
Review: Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel of three interwoven stories concerning the composition and reception of MRS. DALLOWAY is really a throwback to the great so-called "weepies," or women's pictures of the Forties and Fifties. The strongest of the threads (and the most affecting) concerns an emotionally fragile housewife (Julianne Moore) barely keeping it together on a summer's day in the 40s in Los Angeles: the rhythms Moore and the wonderful child actor who plays her son are so assured and unnerving that it's almost painfully beautiful. Nicole Kidman garnered a great deal of critical attention (and an Academy Award) for wearing a prosthetic nose and playing Virginia Woolf herself during the composition of her greatest novel. Kidman looks and seems almost nothing like the real Woolf, but the performance is exceptional nonetheless: she almost seems to come unglued by dint of her sheer intellectual strength and sensitivity. In the weakest of the stories (a fault of the original novel), Meryl Streep is quite fine as a contemporary Mrs. Dalloway putting together a party for her best friend, a famous poet (Ed Harris) dying of AIDS, and she redeems the material here a good deal. The movie is knit together with a very beautiful score by Philip Glass.
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