Hours, The

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It never disconnects from two values: its honesty and its intensity.

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.

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.

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Kidman, Moore, and Streep do some of their best work, backed by a first-rank supporting cast.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

With its deft intercutting of place and time, the film creates a powerful sense of mysticism and fate.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Film Threat Darrin Keene

Much ado has been made about the Oscar-caliber cast that’s been assembled for The Hours. The film’s true star, however, is its script.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Proved that cheerless, existentially unflinching literature can provide the basis for exhilarating cinema.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

If all three of the women’s 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

These three unimprovable actresses make The Hours a thing of beauty.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Richly layered, deliberately paced, dealing with difficult emotions and life decisions, it feels like a moody wintry afternoon.

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.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

It's a noble work, an elegant work, a compassionate work -- and a somewhat tedious and glaringly self-important work.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The result is somewhat better than a Masterpiece Theatre gloss job, but it's far from the essence of Woolf.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

You have to grasp at straws to make even "poetic" sense of the narrative.

Time Richard Schickel

A grim and uninvolving film, for which Philip Glass unwittingly provides the perfect score -- tuneless, oppressive, droning, painfully self-important.