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If we deserve a 'feel-good' movie for the holidays, then this one is a needs some trimming before we can say it's ready. First, the matter of suspending your disbelief. A British Prime Minister who goes as he pleases, a boy who just lost his mother but is grieving because he is in love, same boy running around Heathrow Airport like there is no such thing as security, and an ambiguous love triangle between an African man, his white best friend, and his newly wedded white bride. Then there is that remark by the Prime Minister that he would eliminate the ex-boyfriend of his love interest (a la Tony Blair and his WMD top scientist?). Finally too much of a good thing is not necessarily good. Exploiting the old Pop star, Billy, for all its worth; the Colin character who goes to Wisconsin to find love; and the couple who find love doing simulated sex. Amidst all this, the sleeper was Claudia Schiffen showing up as someone called Carol. I think most everyone missed that one.

Spike Lee's "The 25th Hour" is respectful, melancholic, sardonic, whimsical, but above all else, unequivocal. In a movie that uses the backdrop of the Twin Tower tragedy to illustrate the tenacity of the human spirit to go on, Spike Lee doesn't hold back on crime and punishment. Unlike the rather ambiguous ending of "Do the Right Thing", in this film, we have the replay of the temptation scene in "The Last Temptation of Christ" to powerfully connect all the dots in the lives of five very tormented people. Regrets are many from the father (Brian Cox) who drank too much to support his kid to the drug dealer, Monty (exceptionally played by Edward Norton) who couldn't leave the table while he was ahead, to his girlfriend Naturelle (Corina Dawson) who benefited from all the riches without trying to stop the live of crime to the best friend, Frankie (Barry Pepper), who knew early on that things would end up badly. Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jacob, gives a sterling performance as a school teacher secretly lusting his 'lolita' student (Anna Paquin). Spike Lee doesn't hold anything back from the opinionated viewpoints of foreigners in New York City to the super-stud values of a single white male. But everything revolves around Monty and the future that awaits him in prison the very next day. The film powerfully teaches us that once the deed is done, consequences have to be paid, be it a city that has to rebuild or a man who has to go on with his honor.

"The Hours" is about time - time we have left to make our lives enjoyable or to spend it in misery. It features the lives of three women, which might explain why half the film-goers (the males) might not want to see it and why it was left out of Ebert and Roeper's Top 10 films. If that perception is true, that would be a shame. "The Hours" is a wonderfully crafted film about universal themes of life and death, suppression and freedom, and unresolved love. That it is told from the viewpoint of three women should not diminish any of its appeal. Virginia Woolf must combat her life long mental affliction even as husband Leonard tries to manage her condition. Using the novel, 'Mrs Dalloway', the film conveys the heartache of isolation and forlorn lives in two other women who are directly connected to the book. In 1951, we meet Laura and Dan who, with their young son, would seem an ideal family. But Laura yearns for freedom, much as Mrs. Dalloway, and she must choose between giving up her family or dying. Move to 2001, and there is yet another Mrs. Dalloway in Claire and her dogged responsibility toward her former lover, Richard, now dying of AIDS. The themes of liberation, lesbianism, and dying enthrall all three women, and one does die in order that those around her might value even more the living. You cannot find three better actresses to portray these very complex individuals, in Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, and Nicole Kidman, any or all should be nominated for Oscars. An equally fine supporting cast of Ed Harris, John Reilly, Stephen Dillane, Claire Danes, and Allison Janey make "The Hours" one of the most interesting and intelligent melodramas to come along in a while.