The Hours

Director: Stephen Daldry
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 0.5

Adaptation of the grim Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham about three generations of women with problems - Virginia Woolf and her mental illness, a housewife and her mental illness and Meryl Streep's dinner party for a friend dying of AIDS. Overwrought on virtually every level, it's not about adapting or making the best of things, but rather about absolute misery and suffering, with every scene shot with the grimmest of filters and the most ugly grays. Consciously depressing but to little effect, it's so weak-minded and pointless it borders on the offensive.