2002

March 18, 2003
Century Mountain View
USA
English
114 minutes

Always -- The Hours.

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Miranda Richardson, John C. Reilly, Toni Collette, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Claire Danes, and Jeff Daniels.

Those guys could read the phone book and it would be at least above-average. Absolutely depressing from start to finish. Kidman plays Virginia Woolf, Moore plays a 1950s housewife reading Mrs. Dalloway, and Streep is a woman in the present-day who seems to be living Mrs. Dalloway's life. Each woman is in mental agony about their "lives of no consequence". The cast is chock-full of strong women and it was nice to see that none of them relied upon men for their happiness. But then again, there wasn't that much happiness to see. The music is perfect and the cuts between decades turned out to be easy to follow. It was very well acted. Kidman was frail, Moore was boiling beneath the surface, and Streep was at the end of her rope. Not a happy day at the movies, but well done.

~~Oscar Nominations: Costumes, Director Stephen Daldry, Editing, Score, Picture, Harris, Moore, Kidman, Adapted Screenplay David Hare.

7.9 Critical Consensus