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The Hours Reviews

the hours movie review

Even as it jumps between 20th century decades, The Hours is intensely, almost upsettingly linear. A lot like life.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2024

Few movies depict depression as well, it's subtle and truthful, without overloading it dramatically even though it touches upon suicide and other complicated subjects... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2022

the hours movie review

Loaded with rich dialogue, magnificent performances and a delicate score by Philip Glass, The Hours reminds us how movies can touch and reflect our lives. For the characters that embrace love and truth, life offers joy and hope.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 20, 2022

Self-involved and self-important to a dangerously high degree ...

Full Review | Feb 16, 2021

the hours movie review

A poignant, mature, satisfying drama and, in many ways, ahead of its time.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 30, 2020

the hours movie review

The problem with The Hours' overt literariness is that it makes it a very pleading work; the film wants you to "get it" at every single point of its discourse.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 31, 2019

The Hours is a serious and moving film, one that achieves many of its goals; among other things, it will presumably have many, many more people reading Mrs. Dalloway than Woolf could ever have dreamed of.

Full Review | Aug 20, 2018

The effect is much cruder than the book: you're aware of the geometric patterns linking the parallel stories; everything seems a little too pat, the emblems of the era a little too obviously emblematic - cake-baking in the Fifties, Aids now.

Full Review | Jan 30, 2018

It's a must-see. Mainstream epics routinely privilege the father-son bond... In The Hours, patriarchs barely figure, and the only phallic weapon on display is Virginia's pen.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2017

The script, the score, the sets, the costumes, and the direction are all Oscar quality, and incredible performances from Kidman, Moore, Streep and Harris make The Hours seem like minutes.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 25, 2015

the hours movie review

Smart, thoughtful movie for older teens and up.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 28, 2010

the hours movie review

Daldry's screen version is well acted Kidman, Moore, and especially Meryl Streep, but it's too literal and middlebrow to convey the complexity or lyricism of Michael Cunningham's seminal, Pulitzer prize winning novel.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 26, 2009

More than just Oscar bait; it's a veritable Oscar bait and tackle shop.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 1, 2009

the hours movie review

David Hare's screen adaptation reduces Woolf and her art to a set of feminist stances and a few plot points, without reference to style or form.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2008

the hours movie review

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 14, 2007

the hours movie review

The Hours totally engrosses me... It somehow deepens the [book's] themes to see the bodies, scrutinize the faces, smell the money, feel the flatness of the screen.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 16, 2006

A boldly realised, affecting work.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

The film's true star is its script.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2005

the hours movie review

Life may or may not be everything it's cracked up to be. This movie most definitely is.

the hours movie review

If this movie is about how some choose not to live, it's also just as much about why others choose to go on.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Dec 1, 2005

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FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; Who's Afraid Like Virginia Woolf?

By Stephen Holden

  • Dec. 27, 2002

In ''The Hours'' Nicole Kidman tunnels like a ferret into the soul of a woman besieged by excruciating bouts of mental illness. As you watch her wrestle with the demon of depression, it is as if its torment has never been shown on the screen before. Directing her desperate, furious stare into the void, her eyes not really focusing, 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.

But since that woman is the English writer Virginia Woolf (a prosthetic nose helps Ms. Kidman achieve an uncanny physical resemblance), her struggle is a losing battle. On March 28, 1941, Woolf, hounded by inner voices while in the throes of her fourth breakdown, put a stone in her pocket and drowned herself in the Ouse River near the English country house she shared with her husband, Leonard. And in the opening scene of ''The Hours,'' the eloquent, somber screen adaptation of Michael Cunningham's meditation on that suicide (it won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Woolf scrawls an anguished farewell letter to her husband, then hurries into the muddy water like Joan of Arc embracing the fire, accompanied by the churning, ethereal strains of Philip Glass's score.

The deeply moving film, directed by Stephen Daldry (''Billy Elliot'') from a screenplay by David Hare that cuts to the bone, is an amazingly faithful screen adaptation of a novel that would seem an unlikely candidate for a movie. A delicate, layered reflection that skips around through time, ''The Hours,'' which opens today in New York, is Mr. Cunningham's homage to Woolf's first great novel, ''Mrs. Dalloway,'' published in 1925.

Woolf's novel details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a conventional upper-class Englishwoman giving a party, who experiences nagging intimations of the more adventurous life she might have led. On the same day, Septimus Warren Smith, a character in the novel whom she never meets but with whom she shares some of the same observations, commits suicide. Five years ago ''Mrs. Dalloway'' was adapted into a shallow, unsatisfying film starring Vanessa Redgrave. In accomplishing the virtually impossible feat of bringing to the screen that novel's introspective essence, the director and the screenwriter of ''The Hours'' have righted a wrong, albeit by proxy, through Mr. Cunningham's intuitive channeling.

A central idea animating ''Mrs. Dalloway'' and embodied in its stream-of-consciousness language is that people who never meet, like Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith, are connected by experiencing the same external events. ''The Hours'' extends that idea through the decades to celebrate the timelessness of great literature by placing the author, her fictional alter ego and two of her latter-day readers in the same sphere of consciousness.

Interweaving flashbacks from Woolf's life as she was writing ''Mrs. Dalloway'' with scenes from the lives of Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a Southern California housewife and mother in 1951, and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a New York book editor living in contemporary Greenwich Village, their stories blend into a lofty, mystical theme and variations on Woolf's novel.

Laura, who is depressed and agitated, is reading ''Mrs. Dalloway'' on the same day she is baking a birthday cake for her husband, Dan (John C. Reilly), a blunt, hale World War II veteran who dotes on her and barely notices her anguish. Observing and absorbing Laura's distress is her timid, fiercely clinging young son, Richie (Jack Rovello). While baking the cake, Laura receives a surprise visit from a brightly perky neighbor, Kitty (Toni Collette), who is about to go into the hospital to be tested for cancer and admits she's frightened.

Meanwhile, in New York, Clarissa Vaughan (named after Woolf's character) is planning a celebration for her closest friend, Richard Brown (Ed Harris), a poet in the advanced stages of AIDS who has just won a prestigious award. As the movie folds these stories together, it emerges that Richard is Laura's grown-up son. And in a huge risk that pays off, the movie gives the dying poet a sudden flashback to the scared little boy he was (and fundamentally still is). Another bold surreal touch imagines Laura lying on a bed that's suddenly engulfed by the river that took Woolf.

Clarissa and Richard were lovers when they were younger, but both eventually chose partners of the same sex. Richard had a long affair with Louis Waters (Jeff Daniels), now a college professor in San Francisco, who shows up for the celebration of the award. Clarissa has lived for years with a woman, Sally Lester (Allison Janney), and has a college-age daughter, Julia (Claire Danes), from an unknown sperm donor.

Woolf herself was attracted to both men and women, and although her literary alter ego, Mrs. Dalloway, is married to a member of Parliament, on the day of the party her mind darts back to a kiss exchanged with another woman years earlier. In the movie, Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell (Miranda Richardson) visits from London with her family. And Woolf, in a moment of panic, plants a desperate, passionate kiss on Vanessa's mouth. In California, Laura Brown spontaneously reaches out to Kitty with a lingering kiss that is more than polite.

Some of the movie's most wrenching moments show Leonard Woolf (Stephen Dillane) frantically reaching out to his troubled wife and being rebuffed. It's not that the Woolfs don't love each other, but the agony Virginia is enduring can't be touched by love or reason. These moments bring home the film's deepest and most intimidating insight about the essential aloneness of the individual and its feminist corollary: that appearances to the contrary, women in their deepest selves do not and should not define themselves in terms of men.

Clarissa is the most grounded character, probably because she has been the truest to her instincts and has the most love to give back. When Richard, whose good days have dwindled to none, accuses Clarissa (whom he calls Mrs. Dalloway) of forcing him to stay alive, it's obviously true. Mr. Harris, more than matching his tumultuous performance in ''Pollock,'' creates a wrenching, incendiary portrait of a man ravaged with illness, who thrashes with rage and bitterness, his emotions burning out of control like a torched oil slick on a contaminated lake.

Ms. Streep's frayed, moody Clarissa is no hovering, haloed angel of mercy but an intensely self-aware, vulnerable urbanite worn down by her efforts to do the right thing. Through Ms. Streep's performance, the movie captures, like no film I can remember, the immediate, continuing interaction of experience and memory in the instinctive human drive to infuse the moment with meaning and value.

Ms. Moore's Laura, although a reader, lacks Clarissa's or Richard's literary armament and is the more vulnerable for it. A wistful, frightened creature embarrassed by her own china-doll fragility, she longs to escape a life that feels all wrong but has little notion of where to go or what to do. Ms. Moore brings to the role the same luminous demureness that colors her portrayal of an innocent, well-meaning Connecticut housewife whose world shatters in ''Far From Heaven.''

All these brooding, complicated people are prototypical Woolfian figures blessed and afflicted with the same feverish imaginations, perplexing ambiguities and brightly etched memories of their younger, more hopeful selves. Yet for all its sexual complexity, ''The Hours'' is not really about sex. The film, like the novel, is a sustained meditation on connection, human possibility, the elusive dream of happiness and the sometimes seductive call of death.

Although suicide eventually tempts three of the film's characters, ''The Hours'' is not an unduly morbid film. Clear eyed and austerely balanced would be a more accurate description, along with magnificently written and acted. Mr. Glass's surging minimalist score, with its air of cosmic abstraction, serves as ideal connective tissue for a film that breaks down temporal barriers.

Appropriately it is Woolf who has the definitive final word on the questions lurking in the backs of the minds of the film's characters with their flickering life forces.

Leonard Woolf, querying his wife about her decision to kill off a character in ''Mrs. Dalloway,'' asks her why.

She answers carefully, ''Someone has to die that the rest of us should value life more.''

''The Hours'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for strong language and disturbing images of disease.

Directed by Stephen Daldry; written by David Hare, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham; director of photography, Seamus McGarvey; edited by Peter Boyle; music by Philip Glass; production designer, Maria Djurkovic; produced by Scott Rudin and Robert Fox; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Nicole Kidman (Virginia Woolf), Julianne Moore (Laura Brown), Meryl Streep (Clarissa Vaughan), Stephen Dillane (Leonard Woolf), Miranda Richardson (Vanessa Bell), John C. Reilly (Dan Brown), Jack Rovello (Richie), Toni Collette, (Kitty), Ed Harris (Richard Brown), Allison Janney (Sally Lester), Claire Danes (Julia Vaughan) and Jeff Daniels (Louis Waters).

the hours movie review

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the hours movie review

Smart, thoughtful movie for older teens and up.

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A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

None Suicides

Sexual references and situations including same-se

Some strong language

Drinking, smoking, and prescription drug use

Parents need to know that this movie has tense and sad situations, including two suicides and one near-suicide. A character speaks of having to have a serious operation. There are sexual references and situations, including artificial insemination and same-sex kisses. Characters use strong language. Gay and bi-sexual…

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sexual references and situations including same-sex kisses

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this movie has tense and sad situations, including two suicides and one near-suicide. A character speaks of having to have a serious operation. There are sexual references and situations, including artificial insemination and same-sex kisses. Characters use strong language. Gay and bi-sexual characters are positively portrayed though sometimes anguished and isolated. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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the hours movie review

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  • Parents say (2)
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Based on 2 parent reviews

3 Actors at the top of their craft

A little disturbing, but exceptional film, what's the story.

In this story of three women of different eras whose lives connect and parallel each other, we see each of them struggle between despair and meaning. Author Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) has moved to the country to cure her depression. She is looking forward to a visit from her sister (Miranda Richardson), longing to return to London, and writing a book called Mrs. Dalloway about one day in the life of a woman who is giving a party. Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is a post-WWII suburban mother pregnant with her second child. It is her husband's birthday and she is trying to make a cake for his celebration. Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) is a present-day editor who is preparing a party for Richard (Ed Harris). He is a poet and novelist who is receiving a prestigious award. But he is very sick with AIDS and may not make it to the ceremony or the party. Richard's nickname for Clarissa is "Mrs. Dalloway" because she shares her first name with the title character. Like Mrs. Dalloway, all three women get flowers. And, like her, all three share an emotional kiss with another woman. And all three try to find something to hold on to so that they can feel that their lives are worthwhile.

Is It Any Good?

THE HOURS is a smart, thoughtful movie. It's beautifully directed by Steven Daldry and beautifully performed by Streep, Kidman, Moore, and supporting actors Harris, Claire Danes, and Toni Collette. Some audiences may find it pretentious, disturbing, or boring, but others will appreciate its subtlety and willingness to grapple with existential questions.

The Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham is, according to the author, a tribute to Woolf's view that "there are no ordinary lives, just inadequate ways of looking at them." He says, too, that Woolf "spent her career writing the extraordinary, epic tales of people who seem to be doing nothing unusual at all. If most great writers scan the heavens like astrophysicists, Woolf looked penetratingly at the very small, like a microbiologist. Through her books, we understand that the workings of atomic particles are every bit as mysterious as the workings of galaxies - it all depends on whether you look out or look in."

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what this means, and how most of us are defined and define ourselves not by huge heroic adventures but by small connections and kindnesses. What did Virginia, Laura, and Clarissa find to give value and meaning to their lives? They have people to love and people who love them - what are they missing, and why? What is the significance of those three kisses, none of which seems to give the characters the comfort and intimacy they are seeking? Why does Cunningham give us three stories touched by the fictional character created by Woolf? Does he think that any of his characters are successful? How can you tell? What book could inspire you as Cunningham was inspired by Woolf?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : January 10, 2003
  • On DVD or streaming : June 24, 2003
  • Cast : Julianne Moore , Meryl Streep , Nicole Kidman
  • Director : Stephen Daldry
  • Inclusion Information : Female actors
  • Studio : Paramount Pictures
  • Genre : Drama
  • Run time : 111 minutes
  • MPAA rating : PG-13
  • MPAA explanation : mature thematic elements, some disturbing images, and brief language
  • Last updated : October 25, 2023

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The Hours (2002) Movie Review: 1st-Rate Streep, Kidman

The Hours 2002 Kidman Streep Moore

  • The Hours (2002) movie review summary: Nicole Kidman (as author Virginia Woolf) and Meryl Streep (as an updated, Americanized version of Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway) deliver superlative performances in director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare’s deeply flawed yet profoundly moving drama.
  • The Hours ’ two other major pluses: Philip Glass’ unrelenting – and unrelentingly affecting – score and Seamus McGarvey’s lyrical cinematography.
  • The Hours synopsis: Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway connects the British author (Nicole Kidman) to a despondent, mid-20th-century Los Angeles housewife (Julianne Moore) and to an early 21st-century New Yorker (Meryl Streep) caring for a past lover (Ed Harris) dying of AIDS.

The Hours (2002) movie review: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Philip Glass’ score are 3 highlights in flawed yet moving drama

Ramon Novarro Beyond Paradise

Based on Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare’s multiple Academy Award-nominated psychological drama The Hours uses Virginia Woolf’s classic 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway (working title: “The Hours”) as the link binding its three female protagonists over the course of one momentous day:

  • Early 1920s English countryside-based author Virginia Woolf.
  • Early 1950s (in the book, late 1940s) Los Angeles area housewife Laura Brown.
  • Early 21st-century (in the book, late 20th-century) New Yorker Clarissa Vaughnan.

Far apart in time and space, these three troubled women share both the deadness of a life of self-abnegation and the tangible reality of death itself: Closeted lesbians Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown contemplate committing suicide; ignoring her own needs, Clarissa Vaughnan is obsessed with caring for an ex-lover dying of AIDS.

Notwithstanding several narrative issues, director Daldry’s lapses into melodrama, and one poorly calibrated central performance, The Hours ultimately turns out to be a profoundly moving achievement. Most of the credit for its success goes to Meryl Streep, outstanding as a 21st-century Mrs. Dalloway; Nicole Kidman, surprisingly effective as the suicidal Virginia Woolf; and Philip Glass, whose haunting score, brimming with longing, is perhaps The Hours ’ most crucial element.

The Hours plot: Mrs. Dalloway across time and space

The changes in settings as The Hours moves back and forth through spacetime are supposed to both accompany and propel the evolution of the three disparate but interconnected storylines.

In 1923, the severely depressed Virginia Woolf has begun working on Mrs. Dalloway , in which London society matron Clarissa Dalloway busies herself by planning a party for the evening.

In 1951, Southern California housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is reading Mrs. Dalloway while experiencing in her own life situations found in the book.

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In 2001, Manhattan literary editor Clarissa Vaughan is intent on throwing a party; in Vaughan’s case, for her AIDS-stricken former boyfriend, the poet Richard Brown (Ed Harris), to whom she is wholly devoted.

Blank Julianne Moore

Each The Hours segment has its points of interest, but Laura Brown’s plight is hands down the weak link. Apart from the lesbian subplot and the fact that she unfeelingly abandons her young son (who grows up to become Richard Brown), Laura’s predicament is just another perfunctory variation of the cliché about the woman who must find her true self away from the constraints of her male-dominated home.

Compounding matters, Julianne Moore’s apathetic (Oscar-nominated) performance – a far cry from her sensitive portrayal of a similar character in Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven that same year – fails to convey Laura’s inner turmoil as she confronts life-altering dilemmas pitting personal freedom vs. social conventions, self-love vs. maternal love, the will to live vs. the will to die.

Instead of playing Laura as a woman whose whirlwind of emotions is buried deep inside – but it’s there – Moore, under Stephen Daldry’s direction, opts to create a character devoid of feelings. Laura’s face is a permanent blank; her expressionless eyes the window into nothingness.

That’s hardly the way to portray a living human being (not suffering from dementia), let alone a troubled, complex one with whom the viewer is supposed to empathize. [1]

Rage-filled Ed Harris

An extension of Laura’s story, Richard Brown fares no better. One key difference: Whereas Laura is the embodiment of emotional hollowness, Richard is all feeling.

That might have worked were if not for the simplistic way the AIDS-suffering character is depicted. Whenever on screen – and without making clear that Richard’s mental faculties are being destroyed by the disease – the usually capable Ed Harris sticks to exhibiting varying degrees of rage.

Once again, Oscar nomination or no, that’s hardly the way to portray a troubled, complex character with whom the viewer is supposed to empathize.

The Hours Meryl Streep

Pitch-perfect Meryl Streep

On the positive side, The Hours features Meryl Streep as its modernized, Americanized Clarissa Dalloway.

The two-time Academy Award winner ( Kramer vs. Kramer , 1979; Sophie’s Choice , 1982) soars above the limitations of both her character and her director, handling several melodramatic scenes without ever resorting to displays of self-pity or over-the-top histrionics.

Her Clarissa may be a controlling type – except, that is, when it comes to her own neglected life – but Streep makes a potentially unsympathetic character “likable” by laying bare Clarissa’s vulnerability and her compelling need to give and receive affection.

Poignant Nicole Kidman

Now, throughout her 25-year film career Meryl Streep has created countless great portrayals of all types of women; as a result, one has come to expect artistic excellence from her. Nicole Kidman, however, is a different matter.

Though an effective antiheroine in Gus Van Sant’s 1995 black comedy To Die For , Kidman’s international movie career has always seemed more like an offshoot of her marriage to Tom Cruise than a byproduct of her on-screen achievements. Following a much hyped (and mannered), Oscar-nominated performance in Baz Luhrmann ’s musical Moulin Rouge! , she reveals a quieter, more introspective side in The Hours .

Helping Kidman appear less plasticky than in many of her other roles (including her destitute heroine in Cold Mountain ) is the prosthetic nose attached to her face. It’s unclear whether this particular bit of makeup possessed magical properties, but the actress – even if no Virginia Woolf replica – has never looked as interesting or acted as affectingly. With a glance, she manages to convey in heartbreaking fashion Woolf’s yearning for freedom from her stifling life, while her deeper, near-somber tone of voice reflects the character’s bleak psychological state.

Finally, to Nicole Kidman belong The Hours ’ two emotional highlights: The first, when Woolf and her niece, while in the midst of a lush forest, focus on the the body of a lifeless bird, a symbol of the ever-present reality of death; the second, at the film’s end, when death itself engulfs Woolf in the waters of the River Ouse. (Virginia Woolf actually killed herself at age 59 in 1941, 16 years after the publication of Mrs. Dalloway .)

The Hours Julianne Moore

Narrative issues

While these and other scenes in The Hours overflow with beauty and poetry – with the assistance of Philip Glass’ music and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s soft, melancholy hues – neither David Hare nor Stephen Daldry fully succeeds in patching up several puzzling holes in the narrative.

For instance, when Ed Harris’ embittered Richard kills himself, this viewer found it impossible to feel any sympathy for him. After all, Richard decides, with what seems like a perfectly clear and cruel head, to jump out the window right in front of Clarissa. That gesture has no immediate motivation, except that a shell-shocked poet in Mrs. Dalloway also jumps out of a window to his death.

Clarissa’s relationship with her female lover, Sally (Allison Janney), is another issue, for we never learn what made her search for the companionship of women. In point of fact, The Hours makes it evident that Richard had been Clarissa’s greatest love and we are also aware that she had been married to another man with whom she had a daughter (a miscast Claire Danes ). True, Mrs. Dalloway was probably a lesbian (with a Sally in her past), but this particular mirroring in the 21st-century Clarissa feels contrived.

In addition, there’s the question of whether The Hours is subtly telling us that Richard “became” gay because of his mother’s negligence. Or worse, because he, as a little boy, witnessed Laura kissing the lips of her beloved neighbor, Kitty ( Toni Collette ). The insinuations are there, even if – mercifully – no overt rationalizations are forthcoming.

Life not ours to live?

In all, even though numerous parts in Stephen Daldry and David Hare’s The Hours are unsatisfying, the whole is undeniably stirring.

Life, The Hours seems to imply, may not be ours to live. Our fate has been sealed long before we were born. Perhaps Virginia Woolf’s own tragic fate had already been written by another author, in some past century, in some far away place.

A disturbing – and perhaps silly – notion that in no way detracts from the human drama, the magnificent score, and the two first-rate performances The Hours has to offer.

The Hours (2002) movie cast & crew Director: Stephen Daldry. Screenplay: David Hare. From Michael Cunningham’s 1998 novel. Cast: Nicole Kidman … Virginia Woolf Julianne Moore … Laura Brown Meryl Streep … Clarissa Vaughan 1923 Stephen Dillane … Leonard Woolf Miranda Richardson … Vanessa Bell George Loftus … Quentin Bell Charley Ramm … Julian Bell Sophie Wyburd … Angelica Bell Lyndsay Marshal … Lottie Hope Linda Bassett … Nelly Boxall Christian Coulson … Ralph Partridge Michael Culkin … Doctor 1951 John C. Reilly … Dan Brown Jack Rovello … Richie Brown Toni Collette … Kitty Barlow Margo Martindale … Mrs. Latch Colin Stinton … Hotel clerk 2001 Ed Harris … Richard Brown Allison Janney … Sally Lester Claire Danes … Julia Vaughan Jeff Daniels … Louis Waters Eileen Atkins … Barbara in the flower shop Carmen DeLavallade … Clarissa’s neighbor Daniel Brocklebank … Rodney According to unverified online sources, uncredited cast members include: Aaron Boyum … Young Richard Brown Michael Cunningham … Man outside shop Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey. Film Editing: Peter Boyle. Music: Philip Glass. Producers: Scott Rudin and Robert Fox Production Design: Maria Djurkovic. Costume Design: Ann Roth. Production Company: Miramax Films. Distributor: Paramount Pictures. Running Time: 110 min. Country: United States.

Academy Awards

The Hours won one Academy Award:

  • Best Actress (Nicole Kidman).

The Hours received eight additional nominations:

  • Best Picture.
  • Best Director (Stephen Daldry).
  • Best Supporting Actress (Julianne Moore).
  • Best Supporting Actor (Ed Harris).
  • Best Adapted Screenplay (David Hare).
  • Best Original Score (Philip Glass).
  • Best Film Editing (Peter Boyle).
  • Best Costume Design (Ann Roth).

More awards & nominations

The Hours won numerous other awards, including:

  • Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear: Best Actress (Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore).
  • 2 British Academy Awards (BAFTAs): Best Actress (Nicole Kidman) and Best Film Music (Philip Glass).
  • Writers Guild of America: Best Adapted Screenplay (David Hare).
  • 2 Golden Globes: Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Actress – Drama (Nicole Kidman).
  • Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Actress (Julianne Moore; also for Far from Heaven ).
  • National Board of Review: Best Film.
  • Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Supporting Actress (Toni Collette; also for About a Boy ).

The Hours nominations included the following:

  • 9 additional BAFTA nods: Best Film, Best British Film, Best Director (Stephen Daldry), Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Supporting Actress (Julianne Moore), Best Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), Best Adapted Screenplay (David Hare), Best Film Editing (Peter Boyle), Best Make-Up/Hair (Ivana Primorac, Conor O’Sullivan, Jo Allen).
  • 5 additional Golden Globe nods: Best Director (Stephen Daldry), Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), Best Adapted Screenplay (David Hare), Best Original Score (Philip Glass).
  • César Awards: Best Foreign Film.
  • David di Donatello Awards: Best Foreign Film.
  • German Film Awards: Best Foreign Film.

Old Laura Brown

[1] Covered in aging makeup – and just as inexpressive as her 1950s self – Julianne Moore is briefly seen as the Old Laura Brown in the 21st-century sequence seen at the end of The Hours .

The role had initially been offered to Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Betsy Blair ( Marty , 1955), who reportedly turned it down so she could care for ailing husband Karel Reisz (Meryl Streep’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman director).

Mrs. Dalloway

Vanessa Redgrave starred as the title character in Marleen Gorris’ Mrs. Dalloway (1997).

Natascha McElhone was the young Clarissa; Lena Headey the young Sally; and Rupert Graves the shell-shocked World War I soldier.

The Hours movie credits via the American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog website .

Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, and Nicole Kidman The Hours (2002) images: Miramax Films | Paramount Pictures.

See also: Starring Billy Crudup and Claire Danes, Richard Eyre’s Stage Beauty fails to delve into the complexities of socially imposed sexual and gender identities.

“ The Hours (2002) Movie Review: 1st-Rate Streep, Kidman” last updated in March 2024.

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the hours movie review

  • DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

the hours movie review

In Theaters

  • Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf; Julianne Moore as Laura Brown; Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughan; Ed Harris as Richard; Stephen Dillane as Leonard Woolf; Miranda Richardson as Vanessa Bell; John C. Reilly as Dan Brown; Allison Janney as Sally; Toni Collette as Kitty; Claire Danes as Julia; Jeff Daniels as Louis

Home Release Date

  • Stephen Daldry

Distributor

  • Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

The ripples of influence wash forward in time. From the ravaged, brilliant mind of Virginia Woolf in 1923, to the printed page in 1925, to the young, timid, unsteady hands of a California housewife in the 1950s, to the thoroughly modern, hardened eyes of a New York City businesswoman. Three women whose lives are mysteriously linked by the printed page, but also by shared thoughts and passions. Three stories bound tightly together—eventually—on the screen, as inspired by Michael Cunningham’s 1998 novel, The Hours , which was in turn inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway .

The film opens with Virginia Woolf’s 1941 suicide. She places stones in her pockets and wades calmly into the river, letting the rushing water engulf her fragile body and battered soul. Eighteen years earlier, she is already struggling with her sanity. She hears voices. She succumbs to “moods.” And she writes furiously. At the moment, she’s writing Mrs. Dalloway . Her husband, Leonard, has removed her from the oppressiveness of city life in London and taken her to Richmond, a quiet suburb. He believes the solitude will save his wife’s life. She despises it, and sinks deeper into the world she’s created in her head: Mrs. Dalloway’s world.

Sheltered under the towering palms of post-WWII Los Angeles, Laura Brown has also submerged herself into Mrs. Dalloway’s world. She turns the pages of the book eagerly, breathlessly. It’s the only thing about her life that’s exciting, she feels. She’s the wife of a proud and adoring husband. She’s the mother of a gentle young boy. She’s four months pregnant. And she’s depressed to the point of collapse. Even baking a simple cake for her husband’s birthday is a monumental task. So she slowly surrenders to the words of Virginia Woolf.

A half-century later, across America, Clarissa Vaughan doesn’t so much read about Mrs. Dalloway as live her. Dalloway’s words pour from her mouth as she becomes something of a reincarnation of Woolf’s fantasy. For ten years she’s lived with her lesbian lover, Sally. But it’s quickly apparent that her true love is a man named Richard. She and Richard, who is dying of AIDS after a lifetime of homosexual relationships, had a summer fling in their youth. Then they parted ways—and chose alternative lifestyles. Now, Clarissa nurses him and cares for him as his demise draws ever near.

positive elements: The Hours ’ positive themes are wrapped around choices and the things that influence them. They aren’t blatant, and in some cases moviegoers will have to brush aside the filmmakers’ intent to find truth, but they’re powerful when found. “The thing I loved about Virginia, the piece of her that stays with me, is her struggle. The idea that you don’t run away from these things or pretend they don’t exist. You accept it and exist within it,” Nicole Kidman said, pondering the untimely death of her character. “I love that Virginia’s suicide letter to Leonard is not about blame. It was her choice, and her right to make that choice.” It’s odd that neither Kidman nor the filmmakers view Virginia’s suicide as “running away.” Yes, Virginia Woolf had the right to make her own choices. We all do. But were they the right choices? By committing itself to the idea that there are no right or wrong choices, just choices , The Hours inadvertently illuminates what God says is the ultimate end for those who make the wrong ones: death. Suicide is, of course, always an option, but it is never right .

In regard to the things that influence our choices, Virginia Woolf’s novel is offered as an icon. The power contained within its pages drives a woman to the very edge of oblivion, then draws her back when Virginia suddenly decides to change a major plot point mid-stream. It serves as a poignant parallel to modern entertainment. Just as books can inspire and mold, so can music, movies, video games and television contribute to the moral and mental state of viewers and listeners.

spiritual content: Death is thought of as an end, not a beginning. Richard and Laura perceive it as an escape from their current circumstances. Virginia thinks of it as a peaceful, intoxicating nothingness. “What happens when we die?” Virginia’s young niece asks her. “We return to the place that we came from,” Virginia replies. Perplexed, the niece says, “I don’t remember the place that I came from.” Virginia somberly agrees, “Neither do I.”

sexual content: By film’s end, all three women have participated in passionate same-sex kisses. Clarissa kisses her lover, Sally (they’re also shown sleeping in the same bed). Laura kisses her neighbor (only in Hollywood can a 1950s housewife suddenly lock lips with an unsuspecting neighbor and have her passions unhesitatingly returned). Virginia kisses her sister (at first the two share a sisterly hug and peck, but then Virginia turns the contact into something more sexual). In Laura and Virginia’s cases, small children watch their mothers engage in these perverse encounters.

violent content: Three suicides. One is a drowning. Another is a long fall from a high-rise apartment window. The third, while not carried out, is at first shown as if it is successful. It involves pills, but is symbolically depicted as a drowning similar to Virginia’s. None of the scenes are gory or explicit, but all are intensely drawn.

crude or profane language: An f-word, an s-word and two or three milder profanities. Jesus’ name is abused four times; God’s name double that.

drug and alcohol content: No drinking, but there is talk about downing Martinis at a country club. Virginia smokes hand-rolled cigarettes while she writes. Her husband, Leonard, smokes a pipe. Laura’s husband smokes a cigarette. Richard quips that since he began taking Xanax and Ritalin together, he has a whole new outlook on life. Laura considers overdosing on prescription medication.

conclusion: The Hours is a brilliantly austere, emotionally nuanced masterpiece riddled with suicidal musings and homosexual propaganda. Two roles stand out. From behind her now-famous prosthetic nose, Nicole Kidman brings a calculated subtlety and convincing vagueness to Virginia’s depression. Julianne Moore loses herself behind the sad eyes of an overwhelmed housewife. The interweaving of Virginia, Laura and Clarissa’s lives is intricate and fascinating. At first you feel like you need a scorecard to keep track of everyone, but slowly you begin to notice that clues to their continuity are being doled out with dialogue, visual motifs and even in the characters’ costumes. When Laura’s shoe falls to the floor as she contemplates taking the pills, you remember that rushing water scooped one of Virginia’s shoes from her limp foot as she succumbed to the cold river’s grasp. As Clarissa morosely scrapes uneaten party food into a trash can, you see in your mind images of Laura angrily dumping her failed mess of a birthday cake. The Hours is obsessed with ambiguity, conundrum, paradox and incongruity. It’s a literary buff’s dream that has leapt from the printed page to the big screen. It digs for answers to some of life’s most perplexing dilemmas, and then turns the dream into something of a nightmare when it comes up empty. Laura confesses that she’s trapped between her family (a circumstance that makes her want to kill herself) and her freedom (a choice that means deserting everyone who loves her). Virginia tells her husband that she longs “to look life in the face, and know it for what it is.” For her, it is death.

What author Michael Cunningham and director Stephen Daldry have done is take Virginia Woolf’s well-known feminist leanings and her self-destructive moods and elevate them to a more vivid and culturally accessible level. (Thankfully, the film isn’t being marketed to teens, most of whom won’t be drawn to the film’s ponderous subject matter and middle-aged broodings anyway.) Decades ago, when he first read Mrs. Dalloway , Cunningham instantly recognized “the beauty and the density and the music of the language.” He remembers thinking, “Woolf was doing with language something like what Jimi Hendrix was doing with a guitar.” Stephen Daldry pays the compliment forward by bringing Cunningham’s meditations to theaters. The result can serve as a creative launching pad for complex ruminations about life, death, depression, mental illness, sexuality and how our choices create our destinies. But woe to the unsuspecting soul who decides to spend a couple of hours with The Hours and doesn’t painstakingly hold it up to the filter of God’s word and His truth. Intense images of suicide and same-sex passion can stir in us emotions that will drive us away from the Lord, rather than serving as reminders—as they should—of where our paths ought not to lead. Left unscrutinized, The Hours communicates that suicide may be justifiable (even beneficial), and that homosexual attractions are natural, pursuable instincts. Adults had better have their Christian worldviews healthily intact before wading into Virginia’s morose river. Most teens will be better off not even dabbling their toes in the water.

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The Hours Review: An Ambitious Movie-Adapted Opera With Sweeping Emotions Across Time

Kelli O'Hara, Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato

"Someone will die at the end of the day." A fictionalized Virginia Woolf (Joyce DiDonato) announces this as she sullenly stares at a dead bird. She's referring to the plot development of her 1925 novel, "Mrs. Dalloway," and she hasn't decided who will die yet in her novel, which would be considered a modernist masterpiece long after her 1941 suicide. She's also echoing her own suicidal dread. She also doesn't know that she's portending another woman's ending.

Based on Michael Cunningham's novel and the 2002 Paramount Pictures film adaptation directed by Stephen Daldry, "The Hours" opera premiere on the Metropolitan Stage is an ambitious undertaking. Balancing out three women's narratives from different time periods, both text and movie contain multitudes: the exhaustion of ordinary living, mental illness, queer lives, and the connective tissue of literature. This may sound lofty for an opera but the medium has a favorable condition: a large stage where time periods — and the specific individual emotions contained in them — share a temporal space. Owing to the staging by Phelim McDermott, this operatic version is resplendent in the emotions propelled by Kevin Puts's music and its three leading ladies (succeeding the movie leads Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman).

The construction of Woolf's novel in 1923 Richmond, London is paralleled with the day-in-the-life of other women living decades after. In 1999 Manhattan, literary editor Clarissa Vaughan (Renée Fleming) is throwing her dying poet friend-cum-former-lover a party to celebrate his recent literary prize. Coincidentally sharing a namesake of Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway heroine (it's an inside joke with her friend), Clarissa doesn't know that she's living in a modern retelling of Mrs. Dalloway's life — down to the purchase of flowers like in the novel's opening. Meanwhile, in 1949 Los Angeles, a pregnant housewife Laura Brown (Kelli O'Hara, from " The Gilded Age ") reads "Mrs. Dalloway" as a distraction from domestic labor.

Each woman is undergoing an existential crisis. Woolf obsesses over her novel and her feelings of inadequacy. For Laura, heteronormative expectations suffocate her. Baking her husband (Brandon Cedel, with perfect hubby oblivion in bass-baritone) a perfect birthday cake is taking a toll on her sanity. Later, her impulsive kiss with a female neighbor (Sylvia D'Eramo) drives her deeper into despair. As for Clarissa, she frets over her partner (Denyce Graves) wanting a child and mourns for the passionate romance between her and her dying ex-lover, Richard (a splendid bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen). He is her last connection to a past idealism.

An enthralling design

McDermott has a theatre tapestry that includes the likes of "Akhnaten" (and he's now directing the "My Neighbour Totoro" staging on the West End). While maintaining his signature for abstractions, "The Hours" assumes a more subdued palette than his work on "Akhnaten" and "Satyagraha."

Designed by Tom Pye, square sets represent each woman's respective interiority and their time period: a drab mustard wall for Virginia, bright floral blues and yellows for Laura, and brick red for Clarissa. In Pye's characteristic costuming, Virginia stands dour in browns and reds to suggest her closeness to the dirt; Laura wears silky blue with floral patterns; and Clarissa dons a confident veneer of bright white that belies her insecurities.

Both top-of-their-game sopranos, Fleming and O'Hara emanate sorrow and longing in their bones. With a heavy dramatic soprano approach, Fleming plays it cool and collected before events shatter her confidence. With a more buttery lyric soprano voice, O'Hara straddles the line between Laura's dreams of escape or recommitment to her facade. But DiDonato's earthly mezzo voice bellows a power and mania that keep the other two in her orbit (whether you sat on the highest family circle balcony or watched the live transmission). Their three voices blended for the finale weave a planetary alignment of emotions, almost like reassuring hand squeezes between the three, even if the trio never touch.

While there aren't necessarily any ghosts, the opera is brimming with an atmosphere of specters to convey the unfathomable wavelengths of melancholy. The giant curtains flutter like ghosts of memory. With choreography by Annie-B Parsons, the gray-attired dancers move in a cross between fluid ballet and automations forcing their joints into movement. A man in a suit, credited as the Man Under the Arch (an eerie countertenor John Holiday), wanders the opera as an implied reaper figure who orbits the women's woes—or at one point, he seems to coax Virginia to the "other side."

It's difficult to not ignore another specter: the composer Philip Glass , who constructed the movie adaptation score (and also happens to be a frequent opera collaborator with McDermott). Puts has likened his compositional task to writing a "Star Wars" opera without John Williams' music. Luckily, Puts' music elicits its self-contained pensiveness to Greg Pierce's libretto ("the flowers, the flowers, the flowers"), while some of the string patterns pay light homage to Glass's minimalism. However, Puts' music does not match the grabbings of contemporary operas like Ellen Reid's "Prism," Matthew Aucoin's "Eurydice," or Terence Blanchard's "Fire Shut Up in My Bones." It could take time and critical consensus to indicate how Puts's score will be regarded in the league of modern opera.

How does it hold up as a gateway opera?

There is one other compositional letdown. Whenever the duets serve as connective tissues between the women across time, Puts does not unite era textures in interesting soundscapes. By the end of Act 1, it sheds most of its perceptible distinctions between the time periods (such as the predominate piano of Woolf's introductory aria and the swing of Laura's nostalgic 50s) in favor of a generic contemporary style. While the distant duet ("Is this the end?") between Laura and Virginia is gut-wrenching in their dread of mortality, Puts doesn't fold character textures upon each other.

You probably notice there's rarely a /Film review of operas. So addressing newcomers to the modern movie-to-opera form, "The Hours" (in its accessible streaming form) may be challenging. Its narrative interweavings are more complex than its fellow movie-to-opera adaptations like "The Exterminating Angel" and "Marnie" (based on the novel but marketing relied on familiarity with the Hitchcock movie). Just as opera-goers generally rely on the printed program to follow the synopsis scene-by-scene, a newcomer to opera might benefit from watching the movie or reading Cunningham's novel (both of which are moving, in my opinion). Still, watching it in isolation, "The Hours" represents the possibilities of opera that can invite a new audience to the art form.

" The Hours " opera will play at theatrical encore screenings on December 14. At an unspecified date, "The Hours" will stream on Met Opera on Demand. Every noted opera (with the exception of "Prism") in this review are available on Met on Demand streaming.

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Britain's big bafta night as the hours has the edge on hollywood blockbusters, guardian interviews at the bfi 'nothing is the hardest thing to do', he'll turn his hand to anything.

Theatre, film - maybe even traffic - Stephen Daldry can direct them all. Here he talks about his acclaimed new movie The Hours, sexuality and his surprise marriage.

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  • Stephen Daldry
  • Awards and prizes
  • Oscars 2003
  • Virginia Woolf

the hours movie review

What You Need To Know:

(HHH, HoHoHo, PaPa, PCPC, FeFe, L, VV, SS, A, D, MM) Depressing, hopeless humanist worldview with very strong homosexual worldview elements, some pagan elements and a politically correct, feminist viewpoint; light language with two "f" words and about six other lighter obscenities; violence includes the depiction of two suicides by falling and drowning; depicted sexual immorality includes lesbians kissing and an acceptance of homosexuality; no nudity; a few portrayals of smoking and drinking; and, miscellaneous immorality such as lying to one's spouse, mother abandons her family, twenty-something daughter is disrespectful to mother, and portrayals of mentally distraught women who can't cope with life.

GENRE: Drama

More Detail:

****WARNING! This movie has a “life is meaningless so let’s kill ourselves” slant, which falls on the “suck the happiness out of your day” scale somewhere between emergency dental work and chronic car problems. So, if you are just too joyful, by all means, continue.

THE HOURS is a movie that follows the lives of three different groups of people in parallel. The first group lives in 1923. The movie introduces viewers to Virginia Woolf, the famous English writer who wrote such notable books as TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, ORLANDO and A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, well played by a dumpified Nichole Kidman. Mrs. Woolf is going insane. In the process, she writes a book called MRS. DALLOWAY. It’s about a woman who goes about her daily life preparing for a party, yet plans to commit suicide.

The second group consists of a California housewife and mother in 1951. Laura Brown, played by Julianne Moore, is also fighting to keep her grip on reality. She is reading MRS. DOLLOWAY by Virginia Woolf. Her husband is a simple, doting man played by John C. Reilly. She is pregnant and has a small, question-filled son who’s about six, Richie, nicknamed “Bug.”

The third group lives in 2001 New York. There are two women (Meryl Streep and Allison Janney) having a lesbian affair, the daughter of one of the women (Claire Danes), a gay poet (Ed Harris) who is dying of aids, and his ex-gay lover (Jeff Daniels).

Woolf’s novel, MRS. DALLOWAY, ties the groups together. Besides being severely depressed, each woman finds herself strongly attracted to another woman. Each of the women are seen kissing other women at some point in the movie. It is only the “modern” group that is not “stealing” a kiss.

Friendship among women is considered the strongest bond of all. The men in the movie are either gay, or simple and doting. Virginia’s husband, Leonard, heroically tries to protect her from herself and her attempts at suicide, going so far as to move her twice, but even then he is pictured as a strained, dour person.

“Why is everything wrong?” “Everyone thinks they are fine . . . but they aren’t.” “Even crazy people like to be asked.” “Your life is trivial, you are so trivial.” “All your friends are sad.” These are just a handful of the quotes from this “cheerful” movie.

In the end, two people commit suicide (and, possibly, others in the audience just to stop the pain!), and everyone else is left to stumble through the world in their sad little meaningless lives. A secondary theme in the movie is the sentiment, “If you are really a deep thinker, you must be melancholy and borderline suicidal . . . because you UNDERSTAND the true meaningless of life and must suffer lesser humans who don’t.

Solomon, when he was “happily” writing Ecclesiastes, might have liked THE HOURS. “Meaningless, all is vanity.” And the title? It comes from the dying Aids victim, Richard, when he talks about why he is not coming to a party at Clarrisa’s in his honor. He explains, “It’s the hours.” His friend Clarrissa asks, “The hours? What does that mean?” Richard replies, “The hours after the party, when I am back here . . . alone.”

THE HOURS will undoubtedly win numerous awards for direction and acting, but most viewers will be bored to tears, especially if you don’t share the movie’s humanist, homosexual worldview. The secular, politically correct world is enamored with borderline personalities that appear in movies like this where the characters are “too deep” to exist within mainstream society. This is true especially if the characters are feminists feeling oppressed by traditional family life or feminists living on the outskirts of decent society.

Overall, THE HOURS is another sad movie that shouts for mankind’s need for a personal relationship with the Divine Creator through our Savior, Jesus Christ. Ironically, it clearly shows the meaninglessness of a humanist life without God and without Jesus Christ. The only answers it provides to overcome this meaninglessness are personal selfishness at the expense of others, suicide or living for moments of affection or “love.” The problem is, however, that the humanist “love” which the movie offers has nothing to do with the love of God and everything to do with the “love” one finds in immoral, perverted homosexual affairs.

Please address your comments to:

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Motion Picture Group

Paramount Pictures

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Phone: (323) 956-5000

Website: www.paramount.com

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the hours movie review

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, the finest hours.

the hours movie review

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“The Finest Hours” tells the story of a true-life rescue operation, that, if someone had tried to pitch a similar but wholly fictional story following its basic parameters, would have been rejected as too implausible. For the most part, it is a solid film that bolsters its innately compelling narrative with effectively low-key performances, some genuinely thrilling sequences and only a few moments here and there that lean towards hokeyness. However, I cannot in good conscience fully recommend seeing it because of a presentation issue that renders the film virtually unwatchable for long stretches.

Set off the coast of New England, the film recounts the events of February 18, 1952 when a severe storm arose with such force that two oil tankers, the SS Fort Mercer and the SS Pendleton, were both literally split in half. While the Fort Mercer was able to get off distress signals and attract help, the splitting of the Pendleton resulted in the sinking of its fore section and the loss of its commanding officers and radios. With the rear section of the ship taking on water and some of the crewmen contemplating going out in the lifeboats—a suicidal move considering the size of the boats and the strength of the storm—it is bookish chief engineer Ray Sybert ( Casey Affleck ) who figures out a way to steer the crippled remains onto a nearby shoal in order to give potential rescue parties a little more time in which to find them before the rising waters finally overwhelm the generators and leave them dead in the water.

Though the Pendleton was unable to send out a distress signal, its existence was miraculously discovered and the commander of a Massachusetts Coast Guard outpost ( Eric Bana ) sends out a four-man crew consisting of sailor-with-a-troubled-past Bernie Webber ( Chris Pine ) and volunteers Richard Livesey ( Ben Foster ), Andy Fitzgerald ( Kyle Gallner ) and Ervin Maske ( John Magaro ) on a 36-foot motorized lifeboat in search of survivors. To local observers, this is a mission destined to at best fail as it is impossible for a boat that size in those waters to get across a sandbar and out into the open sea. Amazingly, after a long and harrowing struggle, Bernie manages to finally get the boat over the sandbar but loses the compass in the process. With night falling and with no way to determine where the ship is going, the mission goes from dangerous to downright suicidal, but Bernie and the others are determined to do their job, and get to the Pendleton to rescue as many of the sailors as they can.

“The Finest Hours” fumbles a bit early on as it goes about setting up its situation. There is an extended prologue charting the courtship of Bernie and telephone operator Miriam ( Holliday Grainger ) that is presumably meant to give an extra emotional resonance, but doesn't add much to the proceedings. It gets even more frustrating later on when the story keeps cutting back from the rescue effort to scenes of Miriam fretting back on dry land. Another problem is the way that the film throws lots of unexplained nautical terminology at viewers—although the story itself is basic enough to allow people to follow along easily enough, the barrage of jargon may throw some for a loop at first. The commanding officer character is also painted in confusing terms—it is never certain whether he is a martinet, an idiot or, as a newcomer to the area, too unfamiliar with the area to understand the dangers he is sending his men into.

Once it gets past these hurdles, “The Finest Hours” turns into an effective rescue drama that does not necessarily reinvent the genre but goes about its business in a smart and generally compelling manner. Director Craig Gillespie , who previously helmed the quirk-fest “ Lars and the Real Girl ” and the surprisingly good remake of “Fright Night,” does a good job of conveying the stories of the Pendleton crew’s struggle for survival and the trials of their would-be rescuers. The performances are also nicely down-to-earth as well—Chris Pine, who has often stuck me as insufferably smug, delivers his most likable work to date as Bernie, while Casey Affleck is equally good as the loner engineer who finds the lives of his fellow sailors suddenly in his hands. Technically, the film is, with the exception of a couple of somewhat dodgy bits, pretty convincing and the sequence in which Bernie struggles to get his tiny ship over the sandbar is a thrilling moment to behold.

And yet, as good as “The Finest Hours” is in its best moments, I am unable to fully recommend seeing it due to the idiotic decision to convert the film into 3-D, presumably as a way of pulling in a few extra bucks at the box office. Under normal circumstances, such a move could just be ignored as a minor nuisance but in this case, it actively goes about ruining the basic experience of watching it. In the case of “The Finest Hours,” a film that takes almost entirely at night and in the middle of a ferocious storm, the 3-D conversion is so murky that there are long stretches where it is almost impossible to discern what is going on up on the screen. If you have the opportunity to see it in 2-D, it is worth a look. But since Disney is clearly pushing the 3-D version, my advice is to skip it and wait for the Blu-ray—sadly, you will not get the full big-screen experience that a film like this cries out for, but at least you will be able to actually see the damn thing.

Peter Sobczynski

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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The Finest Hours movie poster

The Finest Hours (2016)

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of peril.

117 minutes

Chris Pine as Bernie Webber

Ben Foster as Richard Livesey

Casey Affleck as Ray Sybert

Eric Bana as Daniel Cluff

Holliday Grainger as Miriam

Rachel Brosnahan as Bea Hansen

Graham McTavish as Frank Fateux

Kyle Gallner as Andy Fitzgerald

Josh Stewart as Tchuda Southerland

Beau Knapp as Mel Gouthro

Keiynan Lonsdale as Eldon Hanan

John Magaro as Ervin Maske

  • Craig Gillespie

Writer (book "The Finest Hours")

  • Casey Sherman
  • Michael J. Tougias
  • Scott Silver
  • Paul Tamasy
  • Eric Johnson

Cinematographer

  • Javier Aguirresarobe
  • Tatiana S. Riegel
  • Carter Burwell

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'The Coffee Table' Review: 'Hereditary's Head Trauma Has Nothing On This Horror Film

I think I'm going to go throw up now.

The Big Picture

  • The Coffee Table is a disturbing horror film that will make you feel sick for nearly 90 minutes.
  • Director Caye Casas and co-writer Cristina Borobia drag you through extreme domestic depravity.
  • The conclusion of the film feels like a respite but lacks emotional impact, wrapping up hastily.

There is no other horror film you’ll see this year as incessantly cruel and mean-spirited as The Coffee Table . This is both a compliment and a criticism, as, while the film is plenty committed to twisting the knife into its audience, it can also be rather repetitive before rushing to the finish. However, it is also painfully effective at making you feel sick to your stomach for nearly 90 minutes straight. Imagine the ill-fated drive in Hereditary was stretched to a feature, and you’ll start to get a sense of what’s in store for what feels destined to be one of 2024’s more disturbing horror films. Sure, there are plenty of gloriously bloody visions in upcoming works like In a Violent Nature or Cuckoo . Hell, even fantastical supernatural films like Oddity get incredibly dark before they tear you to pieces. The thing is that all of these films pale in comparison to the depravity that director Caye Casas and his co-writer Cristina Borobia drag you through.

The Coffee Table

In the heart of a bustling city, a quaint coffee shop becomes the unlikely crossroads for a diverse group of individuals. Each customer, from a struggling writer to a love-struck couple, finds solace and unexpected connections around a vintage coffee table that holds stories of its own.

The Coffee Table is an endurance test where you see how long both you and the characters can carry on without losing their heads. The precise details surrounding this are best left vague, as the whole point is the initial surprise of seeing everything fall apart and the stomach-churning descent that follows as we observe how someone can carry on pretending that they can put it back together again when we know that this is impossible. Like the most messed up nursery rhyme you could ever experience, sometimes Humpty Dumpty can’t be put together again, no matter how desperately we may want him to be. In this case, it’s something not only kids should not watch, but those who are parents themselves best proceed cautiously as well. As you watch a man's spirit being steadily shattered into a thousand pieces, yours may be broken as well.

What Is 'The Coffee Table' About?

This all begins with the couple of Jesús ( David Pareja ) and María ( Estefanía de los Santos ), who are out shopping for a coffee table. They have recently had a child after much trying and are now trying to make a home for themselves in a new apartment. Thus, when they bicker over their potential purchase while a deceptive salesman watches on, we get a sense that they are arguing about something more than just petty furniture. When Jesús eventually gets his way, purchasing the most tacky table you’ve ever seen and bringing it home, it seems like things are settling down. Of course, he realizes that he is missing one tiny part and thus sets the glass countertop at a perilous angle while María goes out of the store. Left alone with the newborn baby who has begun crying despite his best attempts to provide comfort, the camera creeps down the hallway before we hear the crash of the inevitable disaster strike in the next room. This inciting incident is merely the beginning of the range of emotions that follows. It is an experience that feels like being dragged across the glass that has now been scattered all over the floor while its central character tries to ignore what has rolled under a nearby piece of furniture. Out of sight is not out of mind.

If this sounds like a miserable experience, it very much is as The Coffee Table keeps beating you down with reminder after reminder of how devastating what happened was. Walking a chaotic tonal tightrope, the film also teases out the most pitch-black comedy as we hear characters discuss the importance of family and love while remaining blissfully unaware of how that will forever be out of reach. Taking place almost entirely in the apartment, it is all about placing us in the slow march toward realizing what happened while Jesús was alone in the apartment. Eventually, he will have to admit the truth and come clean about how, while it was an accident, he has done something that can never be undone . As you watch in agony, both leads give remarkable performances even as you feel revulsion starting to overwhelm you.

Pareja, in particular, is mesmerizing to watch. With sweat pouring down his face and deadness in his eyes, it is like we are watching a man whose soul has already gone even as his body continues to walk around. It is undoubtedly a horror film , but it is also about just watching a person fall apart before our eyes in the span of a condensed few hours that feels like an eternity. With claustrophobic closeups and punishing sound design making a more banal domestic scene into a nightmare, it never lets you forget for even a moment what has happened. Every line about coming together and a future that is now foreclosed to them cuts like a knife, slowly bleeding you dry of any hope. It’s relatively restrained about showing the horrors of what happened, but that only makes seeing the pain consuming the face of Jesús that much more agonizing. Even when some lines aren't quite as sharp as they could be, the execution of how everything is presented rips you apart.

'The Coffee Table' Ends Less With a Bang and More With a Whimper

The entire experience is unrelentingly exhausting, making the conclusion feel like both an overdue blessing in how quickly it wraps up and an odd respite considering all that had preceded it. This isn’t to say that The Coffee Table should have been more brutal , but several key moments feel contrived in a way that lessens the final blows. Be it the convenience of a door being left ajar or the arrival of another character who primarily exists to bring everything into the open, how it all comes spilling out is where the film stumbles just a bit.

The patience with which everything else played out is slightly lost as we then hurtle towards a finale that we could all feel was coming. Where we got to know little things about complicated character dynamics and the fault lines that will now be broken open in moments of desperation, this conclusion doesn’t let them linger for too long. Some of this may be out of its emphasis on realism, as real tragedy is not often defined by fulfilling narratives, though a forced final shot breaks this in a way that indicates it was struggling to reach for something more emotional. That it didn’t quite grasp this doesn’t take away from the film writ large as it still lands with a heavy weight on your chest. If only he hadn’t gotten that damn table .

Even as it stumbles a bit in the end, The Coffee Table is one of the most effectively sickening and unpleasant movies you'll see this year.

  • The film is an endurance test that does a great job of continually beating you down.
  • All of the cast give outstanding performances, ensuring the continual agony and dark humor land perfectly.
  • The presentation, with claustrophobic closeups and punishing sound design, make the experience into a nightmare.
  • The film can be slightly repetitive and relies on some contrivances in a mixed back of an ending.

The Coffee Table is now in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes near you.

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  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews

Back to Black

Marisa Abela in Back to Black (2024)

The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

  • Sam Taylor-Johnson
  • Matt Greenhalgh
  • Marisa Abela
  • Eddie Marsan
  • Jack O'Connell
  • 56 User reviews
  • 63 Critic reviews
  • 49 Metascore

Official Trailer

  • Amy Winehouse

Eddie Marsan

  • Mitch Winehouse

Jack O'Connell

  • Blake Fielder-Civil

Lesley Manville

  • Cynthia Winehouse

Therica Wilson-Read

  • Joey the dealer

Sam Buchanan

  • Nick Shymansky

Juliet Cowan

  • Janis Winehouse

Harley Bird

  • Raye Cosbert

Ryan O'Doherty

  • Chris Taylor

Amrou Al-Kadhi

  • Artist Development Man
  • Aunt Melody

Pete Lee-Wilson

  • Perfume Paul

Miltos Yerolemou

  • All cast & crew
  • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Amy Winehouse

Did you know

  • Trivia Marisa Abela had done most of the singing in this film herself. She trained extensively to mimic Amy Winehouse 's vocals.

Technical specs

  • Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes

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the hours movie review

The Best Movies to Watch in Theaters in Summer 2024

The summer movie season kicks off each year in the run-up to Memorial Day. Alongside vacations, pool parties, and outdoor grilling, there are plenty of movies that will offer viewers a nice trip to the cool theaters on a hot day. 2024 is shaping up to have an interesting cinematic summer season.

Marvel movies have kicked off the first week of May 13 times, but not this year, though there is one MCU movie being released during summer. In addition, many of the big franchise films had to be delayed from 2024 to 2025 due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Strikes of 2023. Nonetheless, there are still installments coming for plenty of franchises , such as Planet of the Apes , Alien , Despicable Me , and Mad Max . There are also several high-profile original films like IF , Horizon: An American Saga , and Fly Me to the Moon . The summer movie season this year is also filled with plenty of horror movies , a genre that continues to do well at the box office, and many smaller independent films from the festival circuit getting a wide theatrical release.

Blockbuster franchise entries, bold new original stories, and critically acclaimed films from the festival circuit all make up the summer movie season, with many more in between. Here is MovieWeb's guide to the 2024 summer movie season, theatrical addition. Check out our 2024 summer movie season streaming guide as well.

May 2024 Movies

Jeanne du barry - may 2.

From French filmmaker and actress Maïwenn, Jeanne du Barry has become a major topic of conversation . The plot follows Madame du Barry (Maïwenn), who uses her intelligence and allure to rise in society. She becomes King Louis XV's (Johnny Depp) favorite, and they fall in love. Against all propriety and etiquette, Barry moves to Versailles, where her relationship with the king scandalizes the court.

A Potential Johnny Depp Comeback

The movie was one of the most expensive French films made in 2023 and is being positioned as a potential comeback for star Johnny Depp, whose star certainly has fallen following allegations of domestic abuse and a series of poorly received films.

The Fall Guy - May 3

The first true big blockbuster of the summer movie season is The Fall Guy , taking the first weekend in May that has often been reserved for Marvel movies. An adaptation of the television show of the same name, The Fall Guy is the Barbenheimer reunion that sees Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in the lead roles in this action comedy from director David Leitch, who co-directed John Wick and later went on to helm Atomic Blonde , Deadpool 2 , and Bullet Train . The movie centers around Gosling's character, a stuntman who goes to save the missing movie star to prevent his ex-girlfriend's directorial debut from being shut down.

An adaptation of the '80s TV show, ever since The Fall Guy premiered at South by Southwest, it has been getting strong reviews. Highlighted as an ode to the work of stunt performers (fitting since director David Leitch started out as a stunt double), the movie appears to be the right mix of action, comedy, and romance that audiences want from a summer blockbuster. Riding high off the Gosling mania that has been sweeping the past few weeks with his iconic "I'm Just Ken" performance at the Academy Awards and his hilarious SNL -hosted episode, The Fall Guy has the potential to be a great start to the summer movie season.

Tarot - May 3

The first horror movie of the summer is Tarot , a movie that follows a group of college friends who start dying in ways that are related to their fortunes after having their tarot cards read by breaking a cardinal rule of tarot reading — never use someone else's deck.

The film features Harriet Slater ( Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ), Jacob Babalon ( Spider-Man: No Way Home ), Avantika Vandanapu ( Mean Girls ), Wolfgang Novogratz ( The Half of It ), and dancer Larsen Thompson. While audiences might associate horror with Halloween, the summer movie season is often a great season for horror films as it gives audiences a break from the big blockbuster events.

I Saw the TV Glow - May 3

A24 has found great success releasing horror films in the summer with Hereditary and Talk to Me and is hoping to do the same with I Saw the TV Glow . Directed by Jane Schoenbrun, the movie follows a teenager named Owen (Justice Smith) who is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.

Schoenbrun Returns with Another Spooky Movie

I Saw the TV Glow has been gaining a lot of positive buzz in the festival circuit, first premiering in the Midnight section at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival as well as screening at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival and South by Southwest. The rest of the cast includes Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Danielle Deadwyler, and, yes, Fred Durst in one of two movies he will appear in for A24 during the summer movie season, the other being Y2K . The movie has a limited release on May 3rd before expanding into wide release on May 17, 2024.

Lost Soulz - May 3

Lost Soulz was part of the official selection at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie follows aspiring rapper Sol as he is discovered by a group of Gen-Z musicians after performing at a house party. He joins their tour through the heart of Texas and embarks on a once-in-a-lifetime road trip. Sol and his new collaborators bond over their shared pains and longings for the lives they left behind. Bold and brash, yet surprisingly sensitive and vulnerable, these young artists pour their souls into the music they create together.

The novelty of Sol’s newfound family fades as the demons Sol left behind come back to haunt him, including his guilt over abandoning his ailing friend. His sense of self is put to the ultimate test as he seeks refuge from the rootlessness and loss that has defined his existence. Set to a lo-fi, genre-bending hip-hop soundtrack, Katherine Propper's award-winning debut is suffused with hazy and infectious energy and features virtuosic musical performances.

Lost Soulz Review: A Fleeting, Cinematic Odyssey of a Texas Rappers Origins

New life - may 3.

New Life focuses on a mysterious woman who is hunted down by a resourceful fixer sent by the CDC, and the stakes of the pursuit rise to apocalyptic proportions. Directed by John Rosman and starring Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin, and Tony Amendola, this tense thriller currently sits at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 36 reviews.

New Life Was Inspired by All the Right Things

New Life director John Rosman told MovieWeb that he was inspired by a variety of things, from Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Cronenberg's The Fly to even Chernobyl . "Just from picking up what looks like this little black rock into, like, the full-on melting down of the body, was so effective and terrifying. The first episode of Chernobyl is one of the great horror movies of all time." Judging from the influences and acclaim, New Life is one independent film that shouldn't fly under the radar and can be enjoyed by a wide audience.

Wildcat - May 3

Wildcat is a biopic of American novelist Flannery O'Connor, struggling to publish her first novel while also drawing heavy inspiration from the writer's short stories. Ethan Hawke directs a cast that includes his daughter Maya Hawke as O'Connor and is rounded out by a supporting cast that includes Rafael Casal, Philip Ettinger, Cooper Hoffman, Vincent D'Onofiro, Steve Zahn, Laura Linney, and Liam Neeson.

An Honest Portrait of Flannery O'Connor from Ethan Hawke

The movie almost fell apart in pre-production when O'Connor's racist writings came out, but director Ethan Hawke decided to move forward, allowing that to inform the depiction of Flannery and examine both the environment in which she grew up to inform those thoughts and dig into the contradictions of her worldview to her more thoughtful writings. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2023 and will open in limited release before expanding into wide release.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - May 10

The fourth film in the new rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set nearly 300 years after Caesar's death in War for the Planet of the Apes . When the ape king Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durnard), armed with weapons forged from lost human technologies, perverts Caesar's teachings to enslave other clans, the chimpanzee hunter Noa (Owen Teagues) embarks on a harrowing journey.

The Return of the Apes

Noa travels alongside a human girl named Mae (Freya Allen) to determine the future for apes and humans alike. This highly anticipated entry in the beloved sci-fi series is directed by Maze Runner and future Legend of Zelda director Wes Ball and could kick off a new trilogy for the franchise.

Poolman - May 10

Chris Pine, best known for his work in films like Star Trek, Wonder Woman, and Hell or Highwater , not only stars in but also directed Poolman and co-wrote the script with Ian Gotler. The movie tells the story of a pool cleaner in Los Angeles who uncovers a sizable water heist, in the same vein as the classic film Chinatown .

A Star-Studded Noir Made by Chris Pine

Rounding out the cast are Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Jennifer Jason Leigh, DeWanda Wise, Clancy Brown, and Ray Wise. Unfortunately, it received harsh criticism after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, but co-star DeWanda Wise defended the film to us , saying, "He was extraordinarily specific... The thing about Poolman is, we were playing in such a specific genre. Being directed by him with that degree of both technical and emotional proficiency. I just relished it. I loved it so much."

Not Another Church Movie - May 10

A parody movie like Scary Movie or Not Another Teen Movie , Not Another Church Movie is a parody film of religious-based movies, specifically movies that are popular with faith-based crowds, particularly the movies of Tyler Perry as the lead character played by Kevin Daniels named Taylor Perry.

Big Name Cameos for a Church Comedy

The movie is pulling in some big-name comedic cameos, with Mickey Rourke as the Devil and Jamie Foxx as God. With a cast that also includes Vivica A. Fox, Kyla Pratt, Lamorne Morris, and Jasmine Guy, this parody comedy looks to have a lot more potential than high-profile critical duds like Epic Movie or Disaster Movie .

Gasoline Rainbow - May 10

Documentary duo the Ross Brothers step into the world of narrative fiction with Gasoline Rainbow . This coming-of-age drama follows five teenagers as they embark on one last adventure to the Pacific Coast. Gasoline Rainbow premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival in 2023 and will have a limited theatrical release on May 10th, followed by a streaming release on Mubi three weeks later on May 31st.

IF - May 17

In 2024's second movie based around imaginary friends (after the horror movie Imaginary ), IF looks to be a more family-friendly look at the concept (despite being directed by A Quiet Place filmmaker John Krasinski). IF focuses on Bea (Cailey Flemming), who discovers she has the ability to see imaginary friends who go by IFs. She teams up with her neighbor Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who also has the same ability, and looks to find all these lost friends a new home.

An All-Star Voice Cast Including the Late, Great Louis Garret Jr.

Krasinski is surely casting in on his A-list status and years in the industry as he has assembled an all-star voice cast that includes Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Matt Damon, Maya Rudolph, Awkafina, Jon Stewart, Blake Lively, George Clooney, Vince Vaughn, Richard Jenkins, Christopher Meloni, Keegan Michael-Key, Amy Schumer, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Rhys, Sebastian Maniscalco, the late great Louis Garret Jr. in one of his final roles and Krasinki's own wife and Academy Award nominated star, Emily Blunt. IF is one of many high-profile original films that are coming out in the summer movie season.

Back to Black - May 17

Musical biopics, whether it's Straight Outta Compton or Rocketman , have been notable hits in past summer movie seasons, but there are a lot of questions regarding Back to Black , the biopic about the late Amy Winehouse. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson ( 50 Shades of Grey ) and with Marisa Abela stepping into the role of the iconic singer, it looks to chronicle the brief period of the singer's fame before her tragic passing at the young age of 27. The movie has already opened in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, and New Zealand but was held off in the United States for a summer release.

A Divisive Look at a Troubled Singer

Reviews have been mixed, and ever since the film was announced, it has faced a great deal of scrutiny, from being unfavorably compared to the 2015 documentary Amy to many seeing it as partaking in the same media speculation and gossip that haunted Winehouse in her life. This could be a surprise hit of the summer or one that turns the audience off before the opening weekend.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 - May 17

It's hard to believe it has been 16 years since the first Strangers movie scared audiences back in the summer of 2008, and then it took 10 years to get a sequel. Now Renny Harlin, a man no stranger to horror (having directed Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master ), is bringing The Strangers franchise back with not one, but three films.

The First of an Epic Horror Trilogy

The Strangers: Chapter 1 stars Riverdale's Madelaine Petsch and Teen Wolf 's Froy Gutierrez as a couple who, after their car breaks down on their trip to their new home in the Pacific Northwest, get terrorized by the masked killers at their Airbnb. Chapter 1 returns the series to its summer horror roots, with the rest set for undetermined dates later in 2024.

The Strangers Movie Was Originally 'Four and a Half Hours Long,' So Was Cut Into Three Chapters

Babes - may 17.

Pamela Adlon, best known for her award-winning comedy Better Things , makes her debut as a feature film director with Babes . The movie stars Broad City 's Ilana Glazer (who also co-wrote the script) as Eden, an aggressively single woman who gets pregnant from a one-night stand; she turns to her best friend Dawn, played by Michelle Buteau, a married mother of two, for help.

Babes premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this year and earned rave reviews from the audiences, currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with 18 reviews. Audiences will remember Ilana Glazer had another pregnancy-themed film released in the summer of 2021, titled False Positive , but this one will certainly be funnier and more lighthearted than that tense picture.

You Can't Run Forever - May 17

Lionsgate has always been in the business of delivering good old-fashioned thrillers, and You Can't Run Forever is for anyone looking for a throwback to the 1990s or early 2000s. The movie stars Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons as a sociopathic killer who hunts a tormented teenager through the woods.

J.K. Simmons Adds Gravitas to a Simple Premise

It is a simple premise but one that an actor like Simmons brings a certain gravitas to. He has displayed intensity in a variety fo films, but this one should elevate his skills to a more disturbing degree than we've seen before. You Can't Run Forever is directed by Michelle Schumacher, who just happens to be J.K. Simmons' wife.

Exclusive: J.K. Simmons on Edward Hopper and Maintaining a Marriage of Artists

Furiosa: a mad max saga - may 24.

Mad Max: Fury Road was the surprise movie of 2015, being both a box office hit and a critical darling that eventually went on to be nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, so expectations are high for the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga . Starring Anya-Taylor Joy as a younger version of Charlize Theron's character from the previous film, a young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and into the hands of a Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and draws Furiosa into a conflict with Dementus and Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme).

A Memorial Day Blockbuster

George Miller returns to the world of Mad Max after nine years. Furiosa almost didn't happen, as Miller's production company filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over unpaid salaries, which delayed the production of any additional entries in the franchise; this was finally resolved in 2020. Making a follow-up to a beloved movie like Mad Max: Fury Road is no easy task, but if the trailers for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga are anything to go by, fans will not be disappointed. Warner Bros. certainly is confident in the movie, giving it the prime Memorial Day weekend release date.

The Garfield Movie - May 24

Everyone's favorite lasagna-eating, Monday-hating cat is back on the big screen in The Garfield Movie . After Bill Murray's live-action Garfield movie debuted 20 years ago, Chris Pratt is now voicing the titular cat in a new CGI animated film that will introduce the character to a new generation from director Mark Dindal, famous for Cat's Don't Dance and The Emperor's New Groove .

A Great Garfield for a New Generation

After an unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, scruffy street cat Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), Garfield and his canine friend Odie (Harvey Guillén) are forced from their perfectly pampered life into joining Vic on a heist in the outside world. The cast includes Nicolas Ho as Garfield and Odie's owner, John, and features the voice talents of Ted Lasso 's Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein alongside Snoop Dogg, Janelle James, Bowen Yang, Cecily Strong, and Ving Rhames.

Sight - May 24

Sight , starring Greg Kinnear (as Misha Bartnovsky) and Terry Chen (as Dr. Ming Wang), follows the true story of Dr. Wang, a Chinese immigrant who defies all odds to become a world-renowned eye surgeon. Drawing upon the grit and determination he gained from a turbulent uprising in his youth, Dr. Wang sets out to restore the sight of a blind orphan.

Angel Studios Looks for Another Hit

Sight is directed by Andrew Hyatt and written by John Duigan, Andrew Hyatt, and Buzz McLaughlin. It is the latest film from Angel Studios, the studio that released Sound of Freedom and Cabrini , is looking to build off the Memorial Day weekend hype.

Exclusive: Cristiana Dell'Anna & David Morse Preach Kindness in Cabrini

The young woman and the sea - may 31.

Based on the 2009 book of the same name, The Young Woman and the Sea stars the great Daisy Ridley ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) as Gertrude Ederle, an American swimming champion who first won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympic Games. In 1926, Ederle became the first woman to swim 21 miles across the English Channel, which is the main focus of the film. Directed by Joachim Rønning, who is currently working on Disney's Tron: Ares , the film was originally intended to be released on Disney+, but following extremely positive test screenings, they have decided to give the movie a big theatrical release.

The Best Test Screenings Jerry Bruckheimer Has Ever Seen

Jerry Bruckheimer teased at Cinema Con that The Young Woman and the Sea got the best test scores from any film he has ever produced, which certainly says something considering his credits include Top Gun: Maverick and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl . Hopefully the movie is good and audiences turn out for it, showing they do want more than just Star Wars , Marvel, and live-action remakes from Disney.

The Best Movies to Watch in Theaters in Summer 2024

Bloody Disgusting!

8 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including Spider Nightmare ‘Infested’

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What’s that? Another EIGHT new horror movies are releasing this week?! The fresh horrors on tap include a prequel to a box office hit, a violent thriller produced by Sam Raimi, the feature debut of a horror master’s daughter, and a skin-crawling nightmare filled with spiders.

Here’s all the new horror releasing April 22, 2024 – April 28, 2024 !

For daily reminders about new horror releases, be sure to follow @HorrorCalendar.

Them The Scare

First up we have a TV series rather than a movie, but we wanted to remind you that Prime Video’s “ Them: The Scare ,” the second season of the anthology series, premieres on April 25.

The first season of “Them” (now retroactively dubbed “Covenant”) debuted back in 2021, and this second installment of the anthology series will consist of eight episodes.

“Them: The Scare” will once again be set in Los Angeles…

The story centers on LAPD Homicide Detective Dawn Reeve, who is assigned to a new case: the gruesome murder of a foster home mother that has left even the most hardened detectives shaken. Navigating a tumultuous time in Los Angeles, with a city on the razor’s edge of chaos, Dawn is determined to stop the killer.

But as she draws closer to the truth, something malevolent grips her and her family.

The series cast includes  Deborah Ayorinde   as “Detective Dawn Reeve,”  Pam Grier   as “Athena,” and Grammy-nominated musician and actor  Luke James  as “Edmund Gaines.”

the hours movie review

The daughter of horror master David Cronenberg,  Caitlin Cronenberg  is making her own mark in the genre filmmaking space with  Humane , only in theaters on Friday, April 26.

The film is described as “a dystopian satire taking place over a single day, months after a global ecological collapse has forced world leaders to take extreme measures to reduce the earth’s population.”

“In a wealthy enclave, a recently retired newsman has invited his grown children to dinner to announce his intentions to enlist in the nation’s new euthanasia program. But when the father’s plan goes horribly awry, tensions flare and chaos erupts among his children.”

Jay Baruchel  ( This Is The End ),  Emily Hampshire  ( Schitt’s Creek ),  Peter Gallagher  ( Grace and Frankie ),  Sebastian Chacon  ( Emergency ),  Alanna Bale  ( Sort Of, Cardinal)  and  Sirena Gulamgaus  ( Transplant ) star in Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane .

Infested Shudder

Sébastien Vaniček has been hired to direct the  next installment in the  Evil Dead  film franchise , but first we need to experience the film that landed him the hot directing gig in the first place. It’s a spider horror movie titled  Infested   ( Vermines ), and it hits Shudder on April 26.

Watch the creepy, crawly trailer for  Infested  below, which looks a bit like  Evil Dead Rise … with spiders. It’s already easy to see why Vaniček was chosen to direct an  Evil Dead  movie!

In the horror film, “Kaleb is about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over an inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the spider to escape and reproduce, turning the whole building into a dreadful web trap. The only option for Kaleb and his friends is to find a way out and survive.”

Théo Christine  (“Suprêmes”),  Finnegan Oldfield  (“Final Cut”),  Jérôme Niel  (“Smoking Causes Coughing”),  Sofia Lesaffre  (“Les Misérables”) and  Lisa Nyarko  star.

the hours movie review

Described as a heart pounding thriller set in the future,  Jennifer Hudson  and  Milla Jovovich  lead the cast of  Breathe , coming to theaters and Digital on Friday, April 26.

In the film, “After Earth is left uninhabitable due to lack of oxygen, a mother Maya (Hudson) and her daughter Zora (Wallis) are forced to live underground, with short trips to the surface only made possible by a coveted state of the art oxygen suit made by Maya’s husband, Darius, whom she presumes to be dead. When a mysterious couple arrives claiming to know Darius and his fate, Maya tentatively agrees to let them into their bunker but these visitors are not who they claim to be ensuing in mother and daughter fighting for survival.”

Stefon Bristol  directed  Breathe,  written by  Doug Simon . The impressive cast also includes  Quvenzhané Wallis  and  Raúl Castillo  with  Common  and  Sam Worthington .

Boy Kills World Character posters

Bill Skarsgård takes on the role of a deaf-mute action hero in  Boy Kills World , a one-of-a-kind action spectacle set in a dystopian fever dream reality. The film comes from producers  Sam Raimi  and  Roy Lee , and while not a horror movie, it’s a violent thriller all the same. Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions will release  Boy Kills World into theaters this Friday.

Moritz Mohr  directed  Boy Kills World , which was written by  Arend Remmers  ( Sløborn ) and  Tyler Burton Smith  ( Kung Fury: The Movie ).

In  Boy Kills World , “Boy ( Bill Skarsgård ) is a deaf-mute with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, Boy escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.”

The cast also includes  Happy Death Day  star  Jessica Rothe ,  Yayan Ruhian  ( John Wick 3,   The Raid: Redemption ),  Andrew Koji  ( Warrior, Snake Eyes ),  Isaiah Mustafa  ( It: Chapter Two ),  Famke Janssen  ( The Postcard Killings ),  Sharlto Copley  ( District 9 ),  Michelle Dockery  (“Downton Abbey”),  Brett Gelman  ( Stranger Things ),  Quinn Copeland  (Peacock’s  Punky Brewster ), and twins  Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti  ( Big Little Lies ).

Indonesian horror Dancing Village Trailer

Indonesian filmmaker  Kimo Stamboel  ( Macabre ,  Headshot,  The Queen of Black Magic ) is back with MD Pictures’ Badarawuhi Di Desa Penari  (aka  Dancing Village: The Curse Begins ), a prequel to the Indonesian hit movie KKN Curse Of The Dancing Village .

Lionsgate releases  Dancing Village: The Curse Begins in select theaters on April 26.

In the horror prequel, “a shaman instructs Mila to return a mystical bracelet, the Kawaturih, to the ‘Dancing Village,’ a remote site on the easternmost tip of Java Island. Joined by her cousin, Yuda, and his friends Jito and Arya, Mila arrives on the island only to discover that the village elder has passed away, and that the new guardian, Mbah Buyut, isn’t present. Various strange and eerie events occur while awaiting Mbah Buyut’s return, including Mila being visited by Badarawuhi, a mysterious, mythical being who rules the village.

“When she decides to return the Kawaturih without the help of Mgah Buyut, Mila threatens the village’s safety, and she must join a ritual to select the new ‘Dawuh,’ a cursed soul forced to dance for the rest of her life.”

Aulia Sarah, Maudy Effrosina, Jourdy Pranata, Moh. Iqbal Sulaiman, Ardit Erwandha, Claresta Taufan, Diding Boneng, Aming Sugandhi, Dinda Kanyadewi, Pipien Putri, Maryam Supraba, Bimasena, Putri Permata, Baiq Vania Estiningtyas Sagita,  and  Baiq Nathania Elvaretta  star.

KKN Curse Of The Dancing Village  was the highest grossing film in Indonesian box office history when initially released in 2022. Its prequel is the first film made for IMAX movie ever produced in Southeast Asia and in 2024, it will be one of only five films made for IMAX productions worldwide.

the hours movie review

While you wait for Cinderella’s Curse , another Cinderella-based horror movie is beating that movie to the punch. It’s titled Cinderella’s Revenge , coming to theaters April 26.

The Wrap recently reported , “The film stars  Lauren Staerck  as the famed young lady who finds freedom from her wicked stepmother with the help of her fairy godmother. Only this time, instead of sending her to a ball to find her prince, the godmother ( Natasha Henstridge ) helps Cinderella unleash a plan of bloody vengeance.”

Stephanie Lodge, Beatrice Fletcher, Megan Purvis  and  Darrell Griggs  also star.

“I’m so excited for audiences to see this newly imagined horror version of Cinderella in theaters. The picture is scary and fun at the same time,” said producer Mark L. Lester.

the hours movie review

In the wake of her return in last year’s box office hit  Saw X , horror icon  Shawnee Smith is back in Vertical’s horror movie Bloodline Killer , hitting select theaters & VOD on April 26.

Directed by  Ante Novakovic ,  Bloodline Killer  is being described by Vertical as “a terrifying horror-thriller that follows Moira Cole who endeavors to rebuild her shattered life after the murder of her family at the hands of her deranged and obsessed cousin.”

The cast also includes  Taryn Manning, Drew Moerlein, James Gaudioso, Montanna Gillis, Kresh Novakovic, Adam Shippey, Anthony Gaudioso  with  Bruce Dern  and  Tyrese Gibson .

the hours movie review

Tubi has been ramping up their Tubi Original horror movies in the last several months, and the latest one is headed to the streaming service on Friday. It’s titled This Never Happene d .

In the film from director Ted Campbell , “While staying at her boyfriend’s childhood home with him and his friends, a young woman experiences terrifying visions of a violent spirit.”

María José De La Cruz, Javier Dulzaides, Conny Cambambia, Juana Serrano , and Gonzalo Zulueta star in the Tubi Original movie. You can watch the trailer down below.

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Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

the hours movie review

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‘Kraven the Hunter’ Movie Now Releasing in December 2024

the hours movie review

Sony returns to their own Marvel universe with the upcoming Kraven the Hunter , which has been bumped all over the release schedule. This week, it’s been bumped once more.

There was a time when Sony was going to unleash Kraven in theaters in October 2023, but the film was then bumped to August 2024. It’ll now release on December 13, 2024 .

Kraven the Hunter  will be the very first Marvel movie from Sony to be released into theaters with an “R” rating, with lots of bloody violence being promised.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the title character, Marvel’s ultimate predator.

“Kraven the Hunter is the visceral story about how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the titular character in the R-rated film.”

Ariana DeBose  will play Calypso in the upcoming  Kraven the Hunter  movie.

Christopher Abbott  ( Possessor ) is playing The Foreigner, with  Levi Miller  ( Better Watch Out ) also on board.  Alessandro Nivola  ( The Many Saints of Newark ) will play another villain, but character details are under wraps.  Russell Crowe  and  Fred Hechinger  also star.

J.C. Chandor  ( A Most Violent Year ) is directing  Kraven the Hunter .

The screenplay was written by  Art Marcum  &  Matt Holloway  and  Richard Wenk .

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the hours movie review

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‘Humane’ Review: Caitlin Cronenberg’s First Feature Is a Searing Domestic Thriller About Crimes of the Not-So-Distant Future

In a society where state euthanasia has become the answer to climate change, four furious siblings have two hours to decide which one will die.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

  • ‘Humane’ Review: Caitlin Cronenberg’s First Feature Is a Searing Domestic Thriller About Crimes of the Not-So-Distant Future 1 day ago
  • ‘Boy Kills World’ Review: Bill Skarsgård Is a Deaf-Mute Avenger in an Action Film So Ultraviolent It’s Like ‘John Wick’ Gone ‘Clockwork Orange’ 3 days ago
  • ‘Uncropped’ Review: An Enticing Portrait of James Hamilton Makes You Wonder: Is He the Greatest New York Photographer Ever? 5 days ago

Humane

Popular on Variety

From this degraded-future premise, you might expect to see a movie full of swirling crowds of people in chaos. But “Humane” is about one family, and it’s set almost entirely inside a mansion — a veritable castle of a home, built out of 18th-century brick, with a turret and a five-story tower. It looks like the sort of place where the Munsters could live, but in fact it’s occupied by Charles York ( Peter Gallagher ), a retired celebrity newscaster in the Peter Jennings/Dan Rather stentorian liberal mode, and his second wife, Dawn (Uni Park), a venerable Japanese chef.

Charles seems like a decent enough guy, but he’s full of himself. That’s why his adult children don’t trust him. He has summoned all four of them to meet for a dinner party: Jared (Jay Baruchel), a divorced weasel of a professor who goes on TV to be a bureaucratic cheerleader for the enlistment program; Rachel (Emily Hampshire), a seething corporate snake; Ashley (Allana Bale), an aspiring actress whose career has turned out to be nothing, leaving her miserable; and Noah (Sebastian), Charles’s adopted son, a bohemian nervous wreck who’s a piano prodigy and also a recovering addict who killed someone in a car accident (he’s got a prominent scar on his cheek). This is a brood so angry and lost that Eugene O’Neill might tell them to lighten up. But Cronenberg turns out to be a terrific director of actors, and we’re held by the toxic theatrical juiciness of the sibling rivalry.

Why a dinner party? Charles is using it to announce to his children that he has enlisted. He plans to die by euthanasia — that very night — and wants to bid everyone goodbye. (His wife is sacrificing herself too.) This is Charles’ way of leaving a legacy, of dying in a way that will make everyone think well of him. So there’s more than a little family resentment about it. Before long, men in white jumpsuits show up from D.O.C.S. (the Department of Citizen Strategy), the corporate entity the government has put in charge of euthanizing people. The squad leader, Bob (Enrico Colantoni), looks like a guy you’d see in a bowling alley, but he’s a bit of a creep, with a penchant for jaunty gallows humor. He administers the lethal injection to Charles in a peaceful enough fashion. But Dawn, Charles’s wife? She has vanished. Which leads to the real problem: Since the two of them signed an enlistment contract, someone from the York family — one of the four children — is going to have to volunteer to be euthanized in her place. They’ve got two hours to decide who it’s going to be.

Cronenberg treats the mansion as an enormous stage set, turning “Humane” into a kind of psychodramatic slasher movie. You could say that one of the film’s themes is privilege. The characters, as the children of a famous newscaster, thought they were exempt from self-sacrifice. But it turns out that a situation this ruthless is coming for everybody. Yet the film’s real theme is that a bureaucracy that’s too corrupt to solve essential problems (like climate change) will end up shredding the social fabric. Because underneath it all, that’s what it mostly knows how to do.

Reviewed online, April 25, 2024. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 93 MIN.

  • Production: An IFC Films Shudder release, in association with Elevation Pictures, of a Victory Man, Prospero Pictures, Telefilm Canada, Ontario Creates production, in association with Red Jar Capital, XYZ Films, Crave. Producers: Michael Sparaga, Todd Brown, Nick Spicer, Adrian Love, Laurie May, Scott Shooman, Emily Gotto, Martin Katz, Karen Wookey.
  • Crew: Director: Caitlin Cronenberg. Screenplay: Michael Sparaga. Camera: Douglas (Doug) Koch. Editor: Orlee Buium.
  • With: Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, Peter Gallagher, Enrico Colantoni, Sebastian Chacon, Alanna Bale, Sirena Gulamgaus.

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COMMENTS

  1. The Hours movie review & film summary (2002)

    The Hours. Three women, three times, three places. Three suicide attempts, two successful. All linked in a way by a novel. In Sussex in 1941, the novelist Virginia Woolf fills the pockets of her coat with rocks and walks into a river to drown. In Los Angeles in 1951, Laura Brown fills her purse with pills and checks into a hotel to kill herself.

  2. The Hours

    Rated 3.5/5 Stars • Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/20/24 Full Review Jeff M As I begin to dive into the movies of the 2000s, I decided to start with my favorite movie of that decade and my #2 film ...

  3. The Hours (2002)

    The Hours is a psychological drama film directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Stephen Dillane, Jeff Daniels, Miranda Richardson, Allison Janney, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, and Eileen Atkins. The movie is based on the novel by the same name.

  4. 'The Hours' Review: 2002 Movie

    On Dec. 27, 2002, The Hours, starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman, opened in limited release.The film went on to be nominated for nine honors at the 75th Academy Awards, winning ...

  5. The Hours (2002)

    The Hours: Directed by Stephen Daldry. With Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Stephen Dillane. The story of how the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" affects three generations of women, all of whom, in one way or another, have had to deal with suicide in their lives.

  6. The Hours

    Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2022. Loaded with rich dialogue, magnificent performances and a delicate score by Philip Glass, The Hours reminds us how movies can touch and reflect ...

  7. The Hours (film)

    The Hours is a 2002 psychological drama film directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman.Supporting roles are played by Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Stephen Dillane, Jeff Daniels, Miranda Richardson, Allison Janney, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, and Eileen Atkins.The screenplay by David Hare is based on Michael Cunningham's 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning ...

  8. The Hours

    The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman), Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep). Woolf, obviously the well-known and greatly revered artist, is known for her struggles with mental illness and depression. The Hours shows her writing Mrs. Dalloway, a novel about a woman who appears happy ...

  9. FILM REVIEW; Who's Afraid Like Virginia Woolf?

    In the movie, Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell (Miranda Richardson) visits from London with her family. And Woolf, in a moment of panic, plants a desperate, passionate kiss on Vanessa's mouth. In ...

  10. The Hours Movie Review

    Our review: Parents say ( 2 ): Kids say ( 1 ): THE HOURS is a smart, thoughtful movie. It's beautifully directed by Steven Daldry and beautifully performed by Streep, Kidman, Moore, and supporting actors Harris, Claire Danes, and Toni Collette. Some audiences may find it pretentious, disturbing, or boring, but others will appreciate its ...

  11. Images

    movie review by David Ng "A woman's whole life in a single day; and in that day, her whole life." So begins The Hours, Stephen Daldry's prismatic contemplation on female isolation that leaps across books, continents, and time itself.Depicting a day in the life of three separate women, all of whom are connected in some way to Virginia Woolf's seminal novel Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours is at once ...

  12. The Hours (2002) Movie Review: 1st-Rate Streep, Kidman

    The Hours (2002) movie review summary: Nicole Kidman (as author Virginia Woolf) and Meryl Streep (as an updated, Americanized version of Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway) deliver superlative performances in director Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare's deeply flawed yet profoundly moving drama.; The Hours' two other major pluses: Philip Glass' unrelenting - and unrelentingly ...

  13. The Hours

    Movie Review. The ripples of influence wash forward in time. From the ravaged, brilliant mind of Virginia Woolf in 1923, to the printed page in 1925, to the young, timid, unsteady hands of a California housewife in the 1950s, to the thoroughly modern, hardened eyes of a New York City businesswoman. ... The Hours is obsessed with ambiguity ...

  14. 'The Hours' Review: Why This Opera Is a Stunning Triumph

    Renée Fleming, The Hours. 'The Hours,' in Its Latest Adaptation, Is a Stunning Triumph for the Met: Opera Review. Metropolitan Opera House; 3,800 seats; $412.50 top. Opened November 22, 2022 ...

  15. The Hours Review: An Ambitious Movie-Adapted Opera With ...

    The Hours Review: An Ambitious Movie-Adapted Opera With Sweeping Emotions Across Time. Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera. By Caroline Cao / Dec. 14, 2022 8:00 am EST. "Someone will die at the end of the ...

  16. The Hours

    The Hours. s. Peter Bradshaw. Thu 13 Feb 2003 20.26 EST. A melancholy 1920s English novelist is crucified with fear of encroaching madness. A depressed housewife in 1940s Los Angeles, unable to ...

  17. The Hours (2002)

    The film begins with British writer Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) putting stones inside her pockets before drowning herself (in real life, she walked in to the River Ouse on 28th March 1941). Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) lives in 1951 in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Her husband, Dan Brown (John C. Reilly) is having a birthday.

  18. The Hours

    Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliott) directs The Hours with a skillful sense of pace and a high regard for the acting talents of the actresses who carry this film into our hearts with so many inimitable scenes of tenderness, loss, discontent, and yearning. The film explores the many spiritual connections that link our lives to others, living and dead ...

  19. Review: The Hours

    Review: The Hours. The film's women are little more than sudsy abstractions of cross-generational repression. by Ed Gonzalez. December 17, 2002. Photo: Paramount Pictures. Adapted from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, Stephen Daldry's The Hours treats Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) as a lesbian high ...

  20. The Hours

    The acclaimed book and Oscar-winning movie, about three women grappling with despair, is making an unusual leap to the stage in New York. 22 Nov 2022. December 2015.

  21. Hours movie review & film summary (2013)

    In the days after the horrific car crash that took Paul Walker's life on Nov. 30, many tributes were paid to the handsome 40-year-old actor best known for his undercover lawman in the "Fast & Furious" movies. He was a great dad to his teen daughter. He was given to generous acts of charity, once secretly purchasing a pricey engagement ring for an Iraq war vet and his fiancée.

  22. THE HOURS

    THE HOURS is a movie that follows the lives of three different groups of people in parallel. The first group lives in 1923. The movie introduces viewers to Virginia Woolf, the famous English writer who wrote such notable books as TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, ORLANDO and A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, well played by a dumpified Nichole Kidman. Mrs.

  23. The Finest Hours movie review (2016)

    The Finest Hours. "The Finest Hours" tells the story of a true-life rescue operation, that, if someone had tried to pitch a similar but wholly fictional story following its basic parameters, would have been rejected as too implausible. For the most part, it is a solid film that bolsters its innately compelling narrative with effectively low ...

  24. 'The Coffee Table' Review

    The Coffee Table is a disturbing horror film that will make you feel sick for nearly 90 minutes. Director Caye Casas and co-writer Cristina Borobia drag you through extreme domestic depravity. The ...

  25. Review: Guillermo Ivan stars in the new thriller '6 Hours Away'

    Actor Guillermo Ivan stars in the new action film "6 Hours Away," which was released on April 19. Nicolás Di Blasi directed the movie from a screenplay by Garry Charles.

  26. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Brooklyn

    838 reviews and 858 photos of ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA BROOKLYN "Phenomenal. Absolutely incredible facility, staff, food, and drink. ... Hours updated 3 weeks ago. See hours. See all 878 photos Write a review ... Movie tickets were $18.99 with a convenience fee of $1.89 per ticket. Came to see in 2D GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE. This movie ...

  27. Back to Black (2024)

    Back to Black: Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. With Marisa Abela, Jack O'Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

  28. The Best Movies to Watch in Theaters in Summer 2024

    The rest of the cast includes Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Danielle Deadwyler, and, yes, Fred Durst in one of two movies he will appear in for A24 during the summer movie ...

  29. 8 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including Spider Nightmare

    First up we have a TV series rather than a movie, but we wanted to remind you that Prime Video's "Them: The Scare," the second season of the anthology series, premieres on April 25. The ...

  30. 'Humane' Review: Caitlin Cronenberg's Searing Domestic Thriller

    'Humane' Review: Caitlin Cronenberg's First Feature Is a Searing Domestic Thriller About Crimes of the Not-So-Distant Future 23 hours ago 'Boy Kills World' Review: Bill Skarsgård Is a ...