the hours [A+]

moviemcpeake snippet: So, I finally gave a movie an A+. I was a little leery about handing out the + part. But I realized that this is a once in a life time movie. I had high expectations. I felt like a giddy little school girl waiting for the movie to start and when it ended I did not want to move, I did not want to speak, I just wanted to soak it all in.

I read the book...well part of it anyway. It was not easy to see how these women came together. So before seeing the movie I knew the general feeling and storyline that involved three women, starting with Virginia Woolf. These women, all from different times and different generations, found each other and the film captured their will to live and their strength through it all.

The story itself and the screenplay adaptation deserve a huge nod, but what makes you understand the pain, the frustrations, and what it was like to be these women, was the acting. Oh, the incredible acting. Nicole Kidman lost herself in Virginia Woolf. She is not Kidman playing the influential writer, she is the influential writer. She read Woolf, lived Woolf, and became Woolf to the point that you would not have ever known it was Kidman. Julianne Moore. Her name deserves to be in a sentence, alone. She brought it all together as the most tortured soul of the film. She made it seem so simple, so pure. You anguished with her, you were caught off guard by her, you felt for her. And the infamous Meryl Streep. She just wanted to plan the perfect party - Mrs. Dalloway. This film was full of small roles that had large meanings. The supporting cast was incredible and helped piece together why these women loved they way they did.

This film made me feel like I had this little light inside of me. That we all have this light. And we forget sometimes to turn it on. We forget to live, to love, to laugh. These three women triumphed even when others thought they failed. These women all supported each other even though their character is not aware of the other women. It is a story all about the surface that magically forced me inside, that made me think about how these women came to be. What death and life mean and how different the answers can be from one person to the next. It is a film about the pains of life and how one survives the pain. "The Hours", is a powerful story told by powerful actors. For me, the hours went by too fast. I enjoyed the world they invited me into, longing already to be part of again.

recommendation: own it. pull it out once a year and be inspired and amazed.