"The Hours" deserves the title "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" even more than the Almodovar film. Meryl Streep plays a literary editor in 2001 New York, Julianne Moore is a suicidal housewife in 1951 Los Angeles, and, most improbably, Nicole Kidman -- with a prosthetic nose -- turns into real-life author Virginia Woolf in 1923 England. Astutely directed by Stephen Daldry, "The Hours" makes for a fascinating and ultimately successful stunt in its cross-cutting among the decades.

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