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Milk
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Happy-Go-Lucky
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Tell No One
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Let the Right One In
82
Rachel Getting Married
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Wrestler, The
80
Frost/Nixon
72
Secret, A
70
I.O.U.S. A
68
Doubt
68
Timecrimes
68
Praying with Lior
67
Bolt
67
Synecdoche, New York
66
Elegy
65
Cadillac Records
60
Notorious
60
Role Models
59
American Swing
58
Reader, The
58
Splinter
58
Quantum of Solace
57
Special
56
Twilight
55
Jihad for Love, A
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
54
Battle in Seattle
53
Tale of Despereaux, The
53
Marley & Me
50
How About You
46
Yes Man
43
Gardens of the Night
43
Not Easily Broken
41
Cthulhu
40
Other End of the Line, The
40
Day the Earth Stood Still, The
36
Seven Pounds
36
Holding Trevor
33
Bedtime Stories
30
Punisher: War Zone
30
Spirit, The
24
House
21
House of the Sleeping Beauties
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Hours, The
Paramount Pictures
MPAA 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)
GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
WRITTEN BY: |
David Hare
Michael Cunningham (novel)
|
DIRECTED BY: |
Stephen Daldry
|
RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: June 24, 2003
Video: June 24, 2003
Theatrical: December 27, 2002
|
RUNNING TIME: |
114 minutes, Color |
ORIGIN: |
USA |
Received 9 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Stephen Daldry) and Best Actress (Nicole Kidman). Named Best Picture of 2002 by the National Board of Review. Received 7 Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture (Drama).
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...
100
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.
100
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.
100
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]
100
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.
100
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
It never disconnects from two values: its honesty and its intensity.
100
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.
100
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.
100
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.
100
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Kidman, Moore, and Streep do some of their best work, backed by a first-rank supporting cast.
100
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
With its deft intercutting of place and time, the film creates a powerful sense of mysticism and fate.
90
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.
90
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.
90
Village Voice
Dennis Lim
It's an astonishing Kidman who contributes the film's -- and maybe the year's -- most inspired turn.
88
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.
88
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.
88
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.
83
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
Proved that cheerless, existentially unflinching literature can provide the basis for exhilarating cinema.
80
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
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.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
These three unimprovable actresses make The Hours a thing of beauty.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Richly layered, deliberately paced, dealing with difficult emotions and life decisions, it feels like a moody wintry afternoon.
70
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.
70
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
It's a noble work, an elegant work, a compassionate work -- and a somewhat tedious and glaringly self-important work.
70
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The result is somewhat better than a Masterpiece Theatre gloss job, but it's far from the essence of Woolf.
67
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.
63
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.
63
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.
60
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.
60
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.
60
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.
50
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
You have to grasp at straws to make even "poetic" sense of the narrative.
40
Time
Richard Schickel
A grim and uninvolving film, for which Philip Glass unwittingly provides the perfect score -- tuneless, oppressive, droning, painfully self-important.
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 127 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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