The Hours

Excellent performances mark this literary, devastating film, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The stories of three women—novelist Virginia Woolf (Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman), a bored 1950s homemaker (Julianne Moore), and a publisher in 2001 (Meryl Streep)—unfold in parallel, echoing the tragic arc of Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. The three narrative threads are effortlessly balanced by director Stephen Daldry, and buoyed by gorgeous, moody production design.