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34
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60
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78
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66
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69
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58
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47
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33
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86
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30
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45
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96
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88
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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81
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63
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73
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94
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29
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16
If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75
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83
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61
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42
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70
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66
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80
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59
More Than a Game
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34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
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48
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73
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xx
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54
Paper Heart
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68
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68
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44
Peter and Vandy
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Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
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65
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76
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69
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79
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40
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77
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61
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67
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69
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64
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69
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You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Hours, The

Universal acclaim
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 130 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by:
David Hare
Michael Cunningham (novel)
Directed by: Stephen Daldry
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 27, 2002
DVD: June 24, 2003
Running Time: 114 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for mature thematic elements, some disturbing images and brief language
Starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, and Miranda Richardson
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place; all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. (Paramount)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A splendid film. It uses all the resources of cinema -- masterful writing, superb acting, directorial intelligence, an enveloping score, top-of-the-line production design, costumes, cinematography and editing -- to make a film whose cumulative emotional power takes viewers by surprise, capturing us unawares in its ability to move us as deeply as it does.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The result is something rare, especially considering how fine the novel is, a film that's fuller and deeper than the book.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
The twin themes of The Hours are the variety of human bonds, especially the bond of love, and the gift that the dying make to the living. The miracle is that such sombre notions fit together as surely and lightly as the dancers in a Balanchine ballet. [23 & 30 December 2002, p. 166]
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Ms. Kidman, in a performance of astounding bravery, evokes the savage inner war waged by a brilliant mind against a system of faulty wiring that transmits a searing, crazy static into her brain.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It never disconnects from two values: its honesty and its intensity.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore bring dignity and Oscar-worthy performances to The Hours, a lovingly crafted meditation on death, loss and literature.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
Near-perfect in every way, The Hours is a compelling meditation on making the most of what we're given in life. For some, it may be too cerebral a film experience, but for those who blissfully fall into its finely tuned modulations, The Hours is timeless.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
There are levels of complexity and nuance and intellectual rigor in The Hours -- it's clearly a film into which you could gain continued insight after several viewings.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Kidman, Moore, and Streep do some of their best work, backed by a first-rank supporting cast.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
With its deft intercutting of place and time, the film creates a powerful sense of mysticism and fate.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which was hardly a natural for the bigscreen.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The links and resonances remain largely abstract -- to understand them isn't necessarily to be moved by them -- while the individual dramas of those three lives are often stirring, and the three starring performances are unforgettable.
Village Voice Dennis Lim
It's an astonishing Kidman who contributes the film's -- and maybe the year's -- most inspired turn.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
For a movie audience, The Hours doesn't connect in a neat way, but introduces characters who illuminate mysteries of sex, duty and love.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
The film actually improves on Cunningham's novel, thanks to gorgeous cinematography, a deft script by playwright David Hare, a mournful, melodious but never intrusive score by Philip Glass and a superb cast that brings the delicately formed characters to full, raging, sorrowful life.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Brilliantly interweaves stories that take place decades apart, and features stellar work by three of the best English-speaking actresses: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Kidman's Virginia Woolf is already controversial -- Yet there's something fierce, noble and deeply affecting in her work that mirrors Woolf's prose style, and her turbulent presence is the soul of the movie.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Cunningham's novel was helped by his prose, which curves gracefully in the historical present to unify the book in some degree. Stripped of that tegument, the film depends more blatantly on Woolf's fate to give it organism and depth.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Darrin Keene
Much ado has been made about the Oscar-caliber cast thats been assembled for The Hours. The films true star, however, is its script.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
Proved that cheerless, existentially unflinching literature can provide the basis for exhilarating cinema.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
If all three of the womens lives had come across with equal weight and artistry, the film, which glides back and forth among them, might have approached the symphonic. But only the Streep section truly inspires the kind of awe and terror that the film as a whole strives for.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
I'm sure mainstream audiences will be baffled, but, for those with at least a minimal appreciation of Woolf and Clarissa Dalloway, The Hours represents two of those well spent.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
This ranks among the highest concentrations of acting talent brought to any screen. But let's spare no praise for David Hare, whose superb script draws heavily on his playwrighting skills.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Still: The Hours is a book about people writing, reading, and living another book, and that literariness makes the movie resist itself.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Will no doubt figure prominently in the awards season. But be warned, you can cut the gloom with a knife.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
Cunningham's and Woolf's novels are dedicated to capturing a person's essence through the events of a single day, and Daldry's film is faithful to that aim. But the range of life presented here feels constricted; the movie misses the sublime for all of the despair.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
These three unimprovable actresses make The Hours a thing of beauty.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Richly layered, deliberately paced, dealing with difficult emotions and life decisions, it feels like a moody wintry afternoon.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
That makes it hard to watch "Billy Elliot" director Stephen Daldry's adaptation without thinking of the one Almodóvar might have made -- which surely would have been warmer, less self-consciously tony, and less relentlessly arid than the one that did get made.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
It's a noble work, an elegant work, a compassionate work -- and a somewhat tedious and glaringly self-important work.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The result is somewhat better than a Masterpiece Theatre gloss job, but it's far from the essence of Woolf.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
While we can admire their attractive exteriors, we don't know anything about the interior lives of the three women so vibrantly miserable in their unhappiness.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Though Daldry elicits brilliant performances, particularly from Meryl Streep and Claire Danes, on balance The Hours is more pretentious than penetrating about existential despair.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A meticulous, elaborate stunt, a movie two degrees of separation from its source, and maybe another degree from viewers' hearts.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
I found the film -- excruciatingly flat-footed, with one of the most exasperating scores (by Philip Glass) ever written. The most fascinating thing in the movie is a nose.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
You can only cram so much of this stuff into a movie without putting your audience to sleep -- The movie sags badly in the middle, swirling around itself without making headway.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It's sometimes hard to breath for the sheer volume of acting sucking the air out of the room, and keeping three narratives movie without muddling them all is a hugely ambitious undertaking for any director, let alone one on his second film.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
You have to grasp at straws to make even "poetic" sense of the narrative.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
A grim and uninvolving film, for which Philip Glass unwittingly provides the perfect score -- tuneless, oppressive, droning, painfully self-important.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 130 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Will P gave it a9:
Touching and thought-provoking. The three leads are fantastic, with an excellent supporting cast, particularly Toni Collette, Ed Harris & Miranda Richardson. The direction is great and the screenplay is perfect, especially the scene with Nicole Kidman and Stephen Dillane at the train station.
Einar J. gave it a10:
After having read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe, I decided it was time to watch the critically acclaimed, the Hours. I've heard of its supposed monotony and depressionista egotism. But, the performances are beautiful on nearly every level. Nicole Kidman transforms herself entirely, fearing her isolation, and her self-control. True, the characters reveal themselves as foolishly ignorant and self-important. Julianne Moore, with her crumbling visage, shows losing her artificiality which she copes with every day and plans for her own happiness and veers from any insanity. Meryl Streep portrays someone needing something, that she will never obtain for herself, almost crashing into the whole mess of things. All the characters portray that behind closed doors, things aren't as perfect as they seem. The script and score perfect the movie, along with the effectively chosen supporting cast. Classic beauty.
Martin H. gave it a10:
This is not just a Drama film. This is the most beautiful movie ever created so sad and so beautiful this is pure art.
Nadie gave it a10:
This movie makes you really believe that cinema is the 7th art form. The magnificent script is complemented by astonishing performances that are very well directed and edited to perfection. The cherry on top: Mr. Glass music. “Come to bed Laura Brown…” represents much more than a line. Everyone knows a person that is trapped in a life where it doesn’t belong. This movie teaches you that you can change your life the instant you decide to do it.
Nick A. gave it a10:
Well where do you begin? Quite simply one of those movies that restores your faith in modern film. The performances of the three leads is irresistible although in all honesty the oscar should have gone to Julianne Moore who in my opinion gave the best performance of any actress in recent years. The director manages to bring the lives of the three together beautifully in an astonishing finale, the supporting cast are also wonderful and the score compliments this masterpiece beautifully, the themes it touches upon tug at your heart and leave you emotionally drained at the end but its worth it because cinema doesnt get any better than this. Put simply brilliant, sensational, a modern masterpiece.
Bernardo S. gave it a10:
This is definetely my favourite movie ever. The performances and the script are flawless. It kept me looking at the screen without even blinking for the whole movie.
Casey A. gave it a10:
Easily one of the best movies of all-time.
