Rating: 
Summary: HUH? TOO MANY HOURS!!
Review: All i could keep thinking was-What is the point of this movie? It STINKS!!!
I saw it at a preview screening for free and still wanted to walk out.
Kidman was the worst in this bad excuse for a movie.
She is MUCH MUCH better in Moulin Rouge.
Rating:
Summary: I wanted to walk out but my wife wouldn't let me.
Review: I counted 4 suicides, 3 lesbian kisses (all sad), a terminal homosexual AIDS patient, artificial insemination (fatherless daugther), mental depression, child abandonment (very sad eyes) and breast cancer. I could go on with the depressing themes but you get the idea. Add in annoying time shifts and you have a huge chick flick flop.
Rating: 
Summary: THE HOURS...I WON'T GET BACK
Review: Damn, was this movie boring and confusing. I'm still scratching my head wondering just who they were making this film for. It's not a bio of Virgina Woolfe in any real sense - we learn that she's manic depressive, commits suicide, and is a writer - if you asked me before the film what I knew about her, that's exactly what I would have said...so, nothing learned there. Instead of concentrating on her complicated life we get two other stories, both taking place in the future - one in 1951 & the other in 2001. The film spends its time bouncing from one time/location to the next and making no sense at all. Their clumsy intentt was to visually show a VW story with one charactor as the thread - think Magnolia, which was brilliantly done and which The Hours tries to ape - even casting a couple of Magnolia stars (Moore & Reilly)to make the scam complete - it just has that P.T.Anderson feel to it.
The dialog isn't really dialog so much as it's a series of statements and confessionals. Bottom line: Self-indulgent movie making presented to us as something important - We're Telling A Story Here - that is ultimately a boring mess.
Rating: 
Summary: Tragic yet Wonderful
Review: 'THE HOURS" is a beautiful movie made from a well written but ugly story. 3 tragic lives have obvious connections. In the 1920's a woman writes a novel called "Mrs. Dalloway", the author lives a sad life. She is unhappy no matter where she lives. She believes moving back to London will make her happy. When in fact she was unhappy there the first time. In the 1950's, a house wife reads the novel "Mrs Dalloway". In the more recent year of 2001 a woman is alot like the character Mrs. Dalloway from the 1920's novel of the same name. In this segment of "The Hours" Ed Harris is superb as a middle aged man with AIDS. He's a writer who after becoming ill begins down a road of severe depression. In the 1920's, Nicole Kidman stars.. In the 50's.. Julianne Moore stars, and in the present day segment.. Meryl Streep stars. All 3 stories in time are masterfully weaved together. All our characters have so much in common, tragic things and wonderful things too. Now lets bring up Nicole Kidman's Oscar. Yes she performed beautifully. However was this role deserving of an Oscar in a leading role? Perhaps not, the role was one that I feel was not large enough for a leading role Oscar, and as Denzel Washington said as he gave her the award that night. "Nicole Kidman by a nose!" I love Nicole Kidman, but I would have rather seen her win an award for her flawless work in "The Others". With that being said her work here certainly didn't hurt the movie. Just about everything about this film is worth praising. 4 stars
Rating: 
Summary: Complex, quietly subversive and ballsy
Review: This is one film that richly deserved its critical accolades, definitely worth owning, or at least repeated viewings. The characters are nuanced, with multiple and conflicting drives---not the tidy and simplistic cardboard-cutouts Hollywood usually comes up with. The three women---Streep, Moore, and Kidman---are flawlessly directed and lead three vaguely connected, but very parallel lives. Streep and Moore's characters reminded me of so, so many women I've known, both friends and family: women who maintain a happy facade (Streep as a dynamic, cheerful socialite and Moore as a placid suburbian housewife) behind which they are desperately empty, sad, and unfulfilled. Nicole Kidman puts in the finest performance of her career---I never would've expected it, given the usually vacuous roles she plays, but her Virginia Woolf is nothing short of amazing. You can just feel the towering genius and passion behind the eerie, unhinged exterior. Devoid of makeup and hair coloring, and wearing a bigger prosthetic nose, she actually looks a million times more attractive, and more human, than her usual generic-glam-blonde getup. Woolf's suicide was a courageous refusal to live a life (in her case, one of chronic mental illness) that she didn't want, could not change and could not otherwise escape. Ed Harris's character also chooses suicide, rather than watch himself die slowly from AIDS. For them, suicide is the only remaining gateway to freedoom and wholeness. Moore's character finds the only alternative to suicide is to desert her husband and children. Only Streep's character dangles in the middle, mired in the same deep, gnawing and nameless discontent but not yet having found a way out. What many viewers may find deeply disturbing is the subtext that true existential FREEDOM---a beaten-to-death buzzword after 9/11---is not only very precious but very elusive. Why? Because most of us do not pass the crucible, are simply not willing to pay the REAL price of freedom: leaving behind everything that chains us down. Even if that means killing yourself, or walking out on your family, or coming out of the closet. Unwilling to let go of our lives, we become trapped in the misery of this clinging cowardice, we become prisoners who can only sit and wait for Death to come and get us, counting the hours dragging by. And Phillip Glass's magnificent score keeps everything moving along crisply, despite the film's title.
Rating:
Summary: An upsetting and demented movie!
Review: I don't really know what the magnificent reviews are all about. I guess when you have actors like Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman the critics tend to get overexcited. I was very upset by this movie. It theme was morbid and the music even more depressing. I guess in times like these it is the "IN" thing to constantly harp on themes like homosexuality and lesbianism, but this is not an uplifting movie. When I go to see a film it is to be entertained and come out with a good feeling. This film certainly failed on that count. I don't want to see women kissing women, AIDS victims throwing themselves out of the window and women drowning themselves in a lake. This story is about misfits who cannot accept life. Aside from the acting, which was great, I hated the film. I'm sorry I bought it and will soon dump it. Hollywood is becoming obsessed with the gay issues.
Rating:
Summary: hypnotic masterpiece
Review: "The Hours" is a beautiful film that manages to dramatize a novel composed largely of interior thoughts. The performances by the three main actresses are each fantastic, and the supporting roles are filled out almost as well. The DVD is a good one, with four informative mini-documentaries and two commentary tracks. The commentaries -- one by Kidman, Streep, and Moore, and one by director Stephen Daldry and novelist Michael Cunningham -- are better than most commentaries, and shed a lot of light on the processes by which this film, which gets better with each viewing, was accomplished.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable Hollywood Magic
Review: did u notice that almost all of the 1-star reviews of this movie are from guys? i wonder why...(plz notice that i'm being sarcastic). children who reviewed it and called it "boring" sadly must not be mature enough to understand the plot. but don't feel bad, i understand. i'm 13, and i think that this is one of the greatest films ever made. tons of people i know turn away from this movie because it focuses on the lives of three lesbians. but that really shouldn't turn you away, because it's an excellent movie, and beautifully shot. nicole kidman portrays writer Virginia Woolf... in an Oscar winning role. Troubled, annoyed, spiteful Woolf appears in the first scene, committing suicide. the scene is amazingly shot, very well done. my favorite scene in the film containts Kidman as Woolf--the one where she and her neice have a funeral for a dead bird...soudns corny, i know, but it's really beautiful. Woolf's scenes take place in the 1920's and 40's. julianne moore plays Laura Brown, a character who, in her prime, lived in the 1950's. Devoted (?) mother, wife and terrible cook, Brown soon discovers that her best friend is about to have her ovaries removed. Perhaps she's TOO good of a best friend...Brown happens to be reading a book by Woolf, entitled Mrs. Dalloway. if you ask me, moore should have at least been nominated for this role. Meryl Streep (who, i'll have you know, is the greatest actress of ALL time) portrays Clarissa Vaughn, friend of a dying poet who has AIDs. She's determined to throw him a party, but on the set date, he says he doesn't want to go. Vaugn is forced to endure the horror and pain of watching her only male lover jump out of the window. Streep's character lives in modern day times, and I think she should've gotten an oscar nomination for this (then of course, I think she should get nominated for everything she's in...and win the awards, too!) words can't express how beautiful this film is. the message, the art, just everything! wonderfully done, superb acting, and a movie that was nominated for BEST PICTURE...and should've won.
Rating:
Summary: In response to the writer from Elmwood, Illinois
Review: THE HOURS wasn't about its characters' latent homosexuality. That was certainly a part of it, but to say that it was the whole of it oversimplifies the characters and the movie. You make Virginia Woolf seem like she was just some batty neurotic who killed herself because she didn't get along with the maid. In fact, almost everybody knows (and it's established in the movie) that Virginia Woolf was mentally ill. She was in the country because she had a breakdown, and she suffered from what might have been schizophrenia. The stones she put in her pockets in the movie were not heavy-handed symbols of "the weight of the world." When the real Virginia Woolf killed herself, she did it by putting stones in her pocket and walking into the river! Maybe Julianne Moore's character wanders away not only because she's gay, but because she doesn't want to relegate herself to a life of making cakes. Seems to me that anybody out of the ordinary--gay or not, and especially female--would be opressed and tortured by '50s society. Michael Cunningham's book makes Moore's character's conflicts more pronounced and complex--but I think the movie established the complexity of her character well. Streep and Moore's problems might not be "extraordinary." Clarissa Vaughn isn't dealing with Sophie's choice. However, I like that the movie deals with the more common problems and issues that face self-aware people. Clarissa Vaughn, especially (like Mrs. Dalloway) shows that sometimes mundane emotions are awfully dramatic, not because they *are*, but because, whether you like it or not, because they feel that way. Virginia Woolf asked (and I'm completely paraphrasing) "Why are books about wars so much more interesting and important than a book about a day in the life of an average woman?" I think THE HOURS asks that question, and proves that...they aren't! SPOILER You said the only character whose decisions you approved of were Moore's because she "chose life." What about Clarissa Vaughn? Everyone talks about what an incorrigable downer THE HOURS is, and I completely disagree. It is exhilerating and uplifting because its message is that, for all of its downfalls and neuroses, life is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Something to be cherished. To quote Cunningham's book: "There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything that we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more." Yes it's from the book, and the book is different from the movie. However, I think that the movie conveys this insight, which is beautiful and (I believe) true to the lives of many, wonderfully.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste another minute...
Review: If you haven't seen this film, get it now. You'll hate yourself for not buying it sooner. This is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. I was mesmerized from the first scene. It is simply brilliant, and Streep, Kidman, Lewis and Harris are, without a doubt, four of the greatest living actors. When the film was finished, I couldn't move. I sat and stared at the blank screen, and I can't remember when, if ever, that's happened with another film. The DVD extras are very nice, and include a documentary on Virginia Woolf and interviews with the three amazing women stars, but to be honest, I had to watch those later because I was so blown away by the film itself that I couldn't concentrate on the extra features afterwards. I think it's nearly miraculous that every aspect of this film -- the writing, directing, cinematography, and every single actor -- is excellent. I think it's a masterpiece.
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