2002, 1 hr 45 min., Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, some disturbing images and brief language.�Dir: Stephen Daldry. Cast: Nicole Kidman (Virginia Woolf), Stephen Dillane (Leonard Woolf), Miranda Richardson (Vanessa Bell), Meryl Streep (Clarissa Vaughan), Ed Harris (Richard Brown), Allison Janney (Sally Lester), Claire Danes (Julia Vaughan), Jeff Daniels (Louis Waters), Julianne Moore (Laura Brown), John C. Reilly (Dan Brown), Jack Rovello (Richie Brown), Toni Collette (Kitty).

To be honest, I expected to dislike this movie as a male chauvinist, with visions of feminist claptrap dancing in my head, with chicks "finding themselves" while men are ripped apart. I figured I had to see it after all the Academy Award nominations. Kind of an unwritten "So, you like movies" obligation.

Politics aside, though, this was a very well made, well said and well acted film.

A time-travel movie of sorts, we follow women in three different generations over about eighty years:

The thread that keeps it together is Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) writing "Mrs. Dalloway" with her ink-stained fingers in England in '23, the story of a woman in one important day: "A woman's life in one whole day, and in that day one whole life."

Julianne Moore reads it and reacts to it in 1951 Los Angeles, and Meryl Streep seems to live the story in 2001 New York City.

Woolf is mentally ill (she hears voices and has tried twice to kill herself thus far) and lives under the watchful eye of a worried husband (god forbid he look out for her, but he's criticized for it). Moore is a housewife with a son, and five months pregnant, who is very unhappy. Then there's Streep, a lesbian who lives with her partner of ten years (Allison Janney - always solid), yet dotes over her old flame, Ed Harris, a gay writer dying of AIDS.

I like that the movie accepts that the audience is smart and the film can flow without stopping to explain any points. There are continuing actions from Woolf's normal day that make it into the later writings in the future, such as Woolf's maid cracking eggs, to Streep later doing so in cooking, as Moore does when baking the cake.

Still, I couldn't help that The Hours periodically pierced my heart with feminist claptrap. Among the entire thread of the film is the idea that no woman can be happy as long as there's a killjoy man there to burden them. Women must be liberated from the Patriarchal Penis People!

Moore, especially, has a warped sense of happiness. As she bakes a cake for her husband, she teaches her son that he won't know they love him unless they do so. Then she kisses Kitty (Toni Collette), a snobby WWII-pinup lookalike, and my entire frame of sense ends.

This is when my non-PC sensibilities look at the film and see it made in a furious blender of Award juice: Depressed chicks, heterosexual male controllers, sympathetic gay male dying with AIDS, women with lesbian experiences, mental illness, and the main cast just, oh, "FEELS" so much. Blend it together and pour in a special Oscar-shaped glass, and you've got The Hours.

I don't mean to discredit to the acting. It uses a Certified Grade A cast to near perfection. In support, for instance, John C. Reilly deserves a cumulative award for all his great work in supporting roles in 2002. Even Jeff Daniels inhabits a small role as Harris' ex-lover, now drama teacher in San Francisco (stereotype gays much?).

All three lead actresses deserve credit for powerful performances. Kidman's Woolf will get the most credit (and not just for the nose that changes her entire look), portraying a strong woman who rages against the dying of the light, that being her sanity. She yearns only for a normal life, as her sister (played by Miranda Richardson) has in London.

Another plus is Philip Glass' music. Very elegant, and you'll hear the piano and strings plenty as the stars walk up to receive Oscars in March.