Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

mrnimblefingers36 Highly recommended for anyone interested in sublime acting. All awards completely deserved and to my mind in particular, Julianne Moore. I'm also surprised that so little acknowledgment is given to Jack Rovello as the young "Richie". Not an enormous part, but every bit as masterfully calculated as Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense". This is not a movie for "entertainment", but totally pulls the audience into the complexities of human relationships and the inner turmoils of even the children surrounding them. One puzzle in the film left me hanging: why does Clarissa say, when asked by Laura Brown if Clare Danes is her daughter, "I never met her father"??

Kirpianuscus It is not exactly a good film. or a masterpiece. or the perfect choice for Oscar. it is not only a remarkable adaptation. because the acting transforms all. the novel, the expectations, the respiration of Michael Cunningham lines, the rhythm, the details. three great actresses are masters of a subtle, impressive, complex transformation of a story who becomes almost magic. axis - a character who guides the life of each movement, who propose new manners to understand the life, who becomes a kind of spirit who has as guest each of the women looking her form of happiness. The Hours remains a revelation at each new view. and that fact is not surprising because it is more than an extraordinary film but a sort of mirror for his public. a film of delicate nuances. and one of refuges for rediscover the meanings of life.

brchthethird Why do people kill themselves? That is one of the central questions/themes that THE HOURS explores. Unfolding across three different time periods, this film tells the story of how the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" affects different women who have had to deal with suicide (or suicidal thoughts) in their lives. It stars Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf (who wrote "Mrs. Dalloway"), Julianne Moore as Laura, and Meryl Streep as Clarissa. Virginia Woolf, who has some mental health issues, is mostly confined to a country home with her husband and writes "Mrs. Dalloway" as a way to cope with her situation. Laura is a 1950's suburban housewife who, despite her external appearance, is very unhappy with her boring life. And then there's Clarissa, who is in a committed lesbian relationship and is planning a party for her writer friend Richard, who is also dying of AIDS. All three women have similar stresses and one of the strong points of the film is the way it seamlessly moves between each time period while still telling a unified story. It also deals with some weighty themes that will give you a lot to ponder aside from the key issue of suicide. Among these are social pressures and expectations, selflessness versus selfishness, what makes a person happy, etc. The acting supporting these elements was also top-notch, as would be expected from the outstanding cast, and each of the three lead actresses gets a scene in which to shine. I should also mention Philip Glass' score, which I was actually familiar with prior to seeing the film. I felt like his music was perfectly suited to the material, accurately conveying the sense of isolation, melancholy, and ennui common to all three of the central characters. However, the film's structure is partly its undoing, although not disastrously so. A lot of the dialogue is pretty on-the-nose, and the juxtaposition of scenes basically tells the audience how they should interpret what they're seeing rather than let them figure things out on their own. Still, the repetition of key dialogue from different characters and using match cuts to transition between time periods was an effective way to unify the narrative, as well as provide needed continuity. When it comes down to it, THE HOURS is a very well-made and well-acted film that deals with heavy themes and emotions, even if in a slightly pretentious way. This isn't a film I can see watching that often, if even a second time, but the potential for discussion and/or self-assessment makes this definitely worth seeing.

Alex Deleon An enormous waste of talent in the most Overblown Overrated Picture of the Year At the 53rd Berlin Film Festival, February, 2003: This morning the press screening of "THE HOURS" (Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf) in the Big Hall helped me catch up on some sleep lost partying the night before. Crashingly expensive BORE and the Kidman role could have been pulled off by any halfway decent high-school actress. Not that Nicole was bad, just that the role is zilch –anybody can play a zombie with a false nose. But the other parts of the film. (it's a three part invention) were even worse. The Ed Harris/Meryl Streep segment could have been removed totally from the film without missing a beat. Who wants to watch Ed Harris dying of leprosy on screen as they claim it's really AIDS ~ and who cares if he left Streep years before for a gay boyfriend? – and now she's living in a lezzy affaire with another woman whom she kisses repeatedly on the mouth. Do we really need all this faggoty digression to embellish the theoretical Va. Wolfe biog? -- I thought this was supposed to be a literary drama, not an excuse for justifying same sex eroticism. YaaawwnThe only one of the three parallel stories that held my interest at all, was the LA segment with Julianne Moore as a middle class housewife back in '51, but only because of her – because for my money she is the best actress in Hollywood –the new Bette Davis! But the overall story line with three extremely dull people building their private lives around the Woolf novel "Mrs. Dalloway" was one long embarrassing bore straining painfully for meaning while falling flat on its face. For me the film was over when Kidman (as Virginia Woolf) went underwater without so much as a blug-blug in the first three minutes of the pre-titles sequence when she commits suicide by calmly walking into a local lake.The following press conference, with a peculiarly subdued Kidman there, was correspondingly null and void. (She would get an Oscar for it the following month but in Berlin she seemed to sense the lack of press enthusiasm) – From the closing Festival press release: "Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore shared best actress honours at the conclusion of the 53rd Berlin Film Festival yesterday for their critically-acclaimed performances in Stephen Daldry's Oscar-nominated literary drama The Hours". This press release merely confirms the fact that so-called "critical acclaim" has little or nothing to do with actual quality and everything to do with industry promotion, also known as gold plated "hype". Ms. Kidman did, in fact, win the 2004 Best Actress Oscar -- literally by a Nose -- Arguably the phoniest nose job and biggest snow job in the history of the Hollywood cinema industry. PS: There is actually a Good little movie about Woolf entitled "Mrs. Dalloway". Check it out.