Rating: 
Summary: Lives interwoven
Review: No synopsis can really do this film justice, because so much of it is about what lies beneath the surface. As much a mood piece as a narrative, this a wonderfully subtle snapshot of three lives in three different eras (1920s, 1950s, 2001) - interweaving literally and thematically in the most unexpected and poignant ways. Each strand echoes and compliments the others - most obviously at the beginning, with clever intercutting as the three women awake to face the day. Contrasts and similarities effortlessly illuminate elements of character and setting, and this is something which continues throughout the film. Decisions and events are frequently mirrored, offering insight into the storylines, and to the choices that are made regarding life, and death. Every viewing opens up new perspectives and new parallels; it's quite breathtaking, really! Superbly acted (what a cast!), beautifully-shot and accompanied by a wonderful score, this is a stunning film: subtle, beautiful, moving but never maudlin. DVD extras: a good package, headed up by two commentaries; the three lead actresses were recorded separately for their commentary, which is unfortunate since when they're together in one of the accompanying featurettes they play nicely off each other. There's good background on the life of Virginia Woolf, the music, and the making of the film. Genuine enthusiasm comes through from all concerned.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning marvel..
Review: Every once in a while a book adapted movie comes out proving more than just a film with box office success. Despite all of the excellent acting by Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore the viewers more concentrate of this beautiful achievement. So rarely can a movie weave 3 stories into one blanket with such accuracy and precise perfection. Although the stories never really connect they are all revolved around suicide and illness. There are some fine supporting roles in this movie by Claire Danes and Allison Janney just to name a few..The Hours is such a gem in movie making and it stands out in 2002 like a sun during night. Each detail is so carefully contructed its hard to find anything wrong with the plots and how they somehow converge into one. Speaking in terms of myself, who is the kind of person never to really bother with huge succesful box-office movies since they always turn out to be drab and fab, this movie was different. It's emotions and fluttering lauguage can reach depths that you never knew you had. The whole movie is almost like a piece of poetry, en excellent poem. One with vivid imagery and excellent descriptive vibes about real-life, This movie is raw and real and it doesnt fail to shy away from the true happenings of suicide and illness which some movies do today.
Rating: 
Summary: A Guy's Take on This Movie
Review: This is exactly the kind of movie I generally dislike, with a lot of moody people, and the general theme is the contemplation of suicide not once, not twice, but by three separate characters in three separate settings in three separate half-centuries. Yet I came away from it with teary eyes (granted, not a high bar in my case). I can't recommend it, really, yet it got my wife and me talking the way few movies do. And the critics loved it. There are too many characters. You can't get involved in them in a satisfying way. The dialogue poses as the sparse, deep sort of stuff that can be very effective if you've been drawn inside the character. Yet as it is, too often it's just dumb (my wife's word, although she would give this film many many stars). I nominate Ray (the Los Angeles 1951 husband and father) and Meryl Streep's (2001) daughter for a new category of academy award: Best Sane Person in a Film Full of Annoying, Self-Absorbed People. Ray has my favorite line in the film. Describing to his son how he met his wife, he recalls being in the South Pacific during the Second World War, and thinking about a girl from his high school, a shy girl whom he decided he would marry when he got home-which he did-and he says about his wife and son, "I imagined our happiness." I imagined our happiness. That's what got him through the war! The whole LA bit is so vivid, so flat and un-ironic, so like the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, released in 1967 in monaural, certainly the last such, and there is something so crystalline about the effect. And that's Ray, saying that totally campy, guileless line, in a movie filled with people who seem never to have imagined the happiness of another person. Close second is Streep's daughter, who lights up the screen whenever she appears, with a wonderful, funny reaction (possibly the only humor in the film, very near the end) to one of her mother's complaints to the effect of "Stop whining, you're just getting older." (Her mother's not so bad; she cares about Richard's happiness at least.) My interest picked up hugely later on when Richard contemplated his photo of his mother, and by the end when Virginia Woolf slides into the river, and the voiceover gorgeously states how long and difficult every moment of life can be (she is quite a writer), I felt enough empathy for this ragtag group as a whole to feel rather touched. The director goes to the length of conscientiously showing shots of round plates of food being cast into round trash cans fifty years apart (fortunately there's not too much of this sort of "look at me" stuff), very early and very late in the story. So he's a careful guy. But I have a quibble: Richard's make-up is so terrifically believable, why let one of the last shots of him show his well-toned quadriceps muscle? Is this an AIDS sufferer who is also a sculling champion?
Rating: 
Summary: A focus on pain, with painful music
Review: The acting's pretty good in places -- but that's all. The surest sign of what you're in for in this kind of Hollywood Spectacle is the music -- driving you to believe something important is happening, when nothing is happening. Even the music goes nowhere -- it starts with portent and ends with portent -- the typically lightweight range and depth of a self-important 'modern' idiot like Philip Glass. Anyway, that's just the most irritating thing about a movie that says nothing about death because it says nothing about life -- except symbolically in an oft-repeated story about 'a particular morning on the beach'. We're supposed to feel "what a bunch of trapped people -- maybe we're all trapped -- but maybe there's hope". I know this because the point is made at the beginning and is remade dozens of times -- focusing on the same pain endlessly, in a flat movie where nothing will unfold but your cerebellum.
Rating:
Summary: another way out
Review: I have never been so caught up with a movie, even now the words of Virginia Woolf trap in my mind like an old friend. The movie has taught me more about life than I can ever anticipate from a movie or anyone, and it feels great. Like a visionary, Virginia Woolf knows that one can not find peace by avoiding life, so always, to look life in the face, know it, love it, and put it away. Nothing more needs to be said. Great movie.
Rating:
Summary: Slightly melodramatic, but an interesting movie overall.
Review: Directed by Stephen Daldry (whose previous film was the excellent BILLY ELLIOT) & Scripted by David Hare & based on the book by Michael Cunningham, THE HOURS is split into three different time frames.
The first is in London in the 1920s with Nicole Kidman in her Oscar winning role as writer Virginia Woolf where she is writing her first novel MRS DALLOWAY, and fighting an oncoming breakdown during the process.(The film opens with her suicide by drowning).
The second segment is set in the 1950s where suburban housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore)is herself battling depression and reading Woolf's novel, and finding it inspirational in this difficult period of her life.
The final segment is set in 2001 where Clarrisa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a lesbian, is dealing with the plight of her ex-husband (Ed Harris, in an excellent performance) who's dying of AIDS.
These three different time zones are brilliantly woven to make a seamless whole, with the film giving vivid recreations of the different eras resulting in a slightly melodramatic but overall interesting movie. THE HOURS is a film which probably holds more appeal for female viewers, but guys won't find it totally insufferable either though it does seem a bit overlong. THE HOURS is the only Nicole Kidman movie to date where male viewers won't be drooling over her, but they won't suffer a coronary if their girlfriends insist they watch it. Interestingly, the movie was disqualified for the makeup Oscar because Nicole's schnozz was digitally enhanced to make it appear seamless onscreen. So basically how much you enjoy this movie depends on whether you are a fan of Woolf (I'll admit I've never read her stuff) & your gender. In my opinion the movie is good, but seriously overhyped. Typical Oscar material in other words, though Kidman gives her best performance to date & deserved her Oscar.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Great For the Lover of Film!
Review: This is definitely not the best choice for someone who loves Arnold and Stallone. But for people who love deep, meaningful, well-crafted film, The Hours is great. This would be a perfect film for a film studies class.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitively Awful
Review: This Film is one of those that only the Critics would love.
Believe it or not, on my First view of HOURS, I did not know that Virginia Woolf was played by Kidman. I just knew that who-ever it was had been truly Dreadful. As good as the Artistic production is on this Work, Kidman is just Plain Awful. And Just as I Loved The Start of SCREAM because Drew was Done away with, it was brilliant that Kidman's Character was appropriately Dispatched. Such a waste of Space for these Hours.
Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly not a perfect 5 stars
Review: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, John C. Reilly, Ed Harris, Miranda Richardson, Allison Janney, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Eileen Atkins, Toni Collette, and Claire Danes. Even with this cast, though, I couldn't get myself to give this film a 10. For some reason, I felt unattached to the Nicole Kidman - Stephen Dillane segment. Not surprisingly, I was most affected by the Meryl Streep - Ed Harris segment. I thought that their unrequited love, which is brought to both characters attention constantly, was genuinely constructed by all the characters involved. It shows how this unrequited love affects not only Ms. Streep and Mr. Harris, but also Ms. Janney and Mr. Daniels. Everyone in the segment knows that Ms. Streep and Mr. Harris should have been together, and that in most intimate ways, they are. The segment that I found myself most drawn to was the Julianne Moore - John C. Reilly segment. Watching Ms. Moore hide her true feelings from her son and Mr. Reilly was heartwrenching. And while Mr. Reilly has the face of a true character actor, I am constantly amazed at the emotions that come across on Ms. Moore's face. She has a face as smooth and beautiful as a Michaelangelo statue ... a porcelain skin too beautiful for words. And yet she manages to use this face as an awesome tool in her considerble acting resource "closet". This becomes very clear as her face is hidden beneath latex in later scenes. Underneath the latex, she becomes less interesting and lucky for us director Stephen Daldry notices this as well and keeps that scene as short as possible. Unfortunately Ms. Kidman does not fare as well. Her performance - and that of Stephen Dillane - is great, no doubts about it. But for some reason I was strangely uninvolved in her segment. I found the other two to be so much less conventional that this segment, even anchored by the great work of Mr. Dillane and Ms. Kidman, seemed somewhat pedestrian. I venture to guess that this segment was the easiest to write and direct. In the end, I thought it was cool the way Harold Pinter and Stephen Daldry (and, I presume, Michael Cunningham) tied it all together. Thematically it was tied together all the way through, but they really tie it up well. Perhaps the greatest comment I can give the movie is to say that I am curious to read MRS. DALLOWAY now. That, and that the film would make a great double feature with Ms. Moore's FAR FROM HEAVEN.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best movies of 2002!
Review: I loved this movie! I thought it was superbly done. It reminded me of MAGNOLIA in the way it intertwined the stories together, and how they all came together. It was a very moving, powerful film with EXCELLENT performances. Nicole Kidman was AWESOME as Virginia Woolf and Julianne Moore was mesmerizing. Ed Harris was PERFECT in his role. It is a film that really makes you think, and as you're watching it, you realize that at one point in your life, you have felt like these characters before. I will end up buying this one, and now I want to read the book as well. Highly recommended!
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