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THE HOURS
Like The English Patient and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Hours is one of those reputedly "unfilmable" novels that has nevertheless bucked the odds to emerge as an exquisite motion picture in its own right. Adapting Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winner, director Stephen Daldry and scripter David Hare have crafted a richly textured film that spans decades to concentrate on three troubled women who are all connected in one way or another to British author Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. First, there's Woolf herself (played by an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman), battling the mental illness that is starting to overtake her as she begins to write Mrs. Dalloway in the 1920s. Then there's Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a suburban housewife in 1950s Los Angeles who, while reading the book, begins to focus on her own misery and how she might best change her lot in life. And finally, there's Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a New York literary agent -- and modern-day Clarissa Dalloway -- who's busy preparing a party for a former lover (Ed Harris) now dying of AIDS. It's deeply rewarding to witness how the movie jumps between time periods, using an event in one storyline to beautifully segue into one of the others -- the result is a film of great cumulative power, sparked in no small part by a superlative cast. Added bonus: A rich score by Philip Glass that might be the year's best. 
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NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
Charles Dickens' assorted works have been brought to the screen on close to 100 occasions, but the number of Nicholas Nicklebys can be counted on one hand with the thumb tucked out of sight. This new Nickleby, the first since 1947, has been pared down from the original text by writer-director Douglas McGrath, who brought Jane Austen's Emma to the screen in 1996. Whereas the Royal Shakespeare Company's landmark stage production ran nine hours, this film clocks in at a little more than two hours; yet this Reader's Digest approach is remarkably fluid and full-bodied, if lacking the emotional wallop of the recent Austen adaptations. As Nicholas, a decent young man determined to protect his family and friends from the harsh circumstances that seemingly dog their every move, newcomer Charlie Hunnam is passable (though rather modern, in that GQ-hunk sort of way); he's surrounded by an able cast of familiar faces, including Christopher Plummer, Nathan Lane, Timothy Spall and, in a pair of standout performances, Jim Broadbent as Wackford Squeers, the cruel head of a decrepit boys' school, and Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell as Smike, the abused orphan that Nicholas takes under his wing.
THE PIANIST
Perhaps mellowing with age, the unpredictable Roman Polanski has made one of the most traditional pictures of his storied career, a Holocaust drama that rarely ventures from the path already trodden by such exemplary efforts as Schindler's List and the TV miniseries Holocaust. Yet the director, whose mother had died in a concentration camp, has also made one of the most personal and heartfelt pictures of his career, and his anger and sadness emanate from virtually every frame. Winner of the top prize at Cannes, this recounts the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish Jew and classical musician who, through the kindness of strangers and breaks of good fortune, managed to survive the Holocaust. The first half of the picture, more familiar but also more emotionally draining, centers on the Nazi atrocities occurring to those around Szpilman, while the second part shifts gears as it concentrates on how he basically had to spend the remaining part of the war hiding out on his own, spending countless months with nothing to do, nothing to see, and usually nothing to eat. More reflective and deliberately paced than many films of this nature, this nevertheless contains some truly disturbing scenes that will be tough for many viewers to take.
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