Great directing, awesome performances and a consistently important message...
Monster's Ball (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:141
Fresh:120
Rotten:21
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Somber and thought provoking, Monster's Ball has great performances all around.
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Dramas
US Box Office: $31,252,964
Synopsis:
MONSTER'S BALL is a hard hitting Southern drama tempered by a story of powerful, life-changing love. It is the story of Hank (Billy Bob Thornton), an embittered prison guard working on Death Row...
MONSTER'S BALL is a hard hitting Southern drama tempered by a story of powerful, life-changing love. It is the story of Hank (Billy Bob Thornton), an embittered prison guard working on Death Row who begins an unlikely, but emotionally charged affair with Leticia (Halle Berry), the wife of a man he has just executed. MONSTER'S BALL also features Heath Ledger and Peter Boyle. Boyle plays Hank’s bigoted, aging father, whose hatred seems to have poisoned his entire family as much as the family business, which is working on the prison Death Squad. Ledger plays Hank’s son, who is hell-bent on getting out of the family business. The film is directed by award-winning filmmaker Marc Forster. He was nominated for an IFP/West Spirit Award as Best Low Budget Feature and won the Movado "Someone to Watch" Prize at the 2001 Spirit Awards for his film, "Everything Put Together."
Set in Georgia, MONSTER'S BALL was filmed entirely on location in and around New Orleans, Louisiana and at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola (also known as "The Farm").
MONSTER'S BALL is from an original screenplay by Milo Addica and Will Rokos, is produced by Lee Daniels, executive produced by Mark Urman, Mike Paseornek, and co-produced by Milo Addica and Will Rokos. Lions Gate Films will release the film in December, 2001. -- © 2001 Lions Gate Films
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Mos Def
Director: Marc Forster
Director: Marc Forster
Screenwriter: Milo Addica, Will Rokos
Studio: Lions Gate Films
Reviews for Monster's Ball
Burning with a quiet intensity, Monster's Ball is bolstered by a poetic, intelligent sensibility not seen in an American film since Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.
Despite the occasionally facile portraiture of screenwriters Will Rokos and Milo Addica, the project is well redeemed by its dank atmosphere and cracker-barrel performances.
The fact that the film spares us not only a constant wallow in misery but also cheap, maudlin uplift is pretty miraculous.
Might even be worth a look when it comes out on cable sometime next year. But it's not worth a trip to the arthouse.
It's not exactly a ball, but this movie does feature two monster performances.
Yes, Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry give Oscar caliber performances. But so do Peter Boyle and Puff Daddy. When all the performances are excellent, critics' understand it's the direction.
A somber meditation on racism and family pathology, anchored by solid performances.
Has everything you could want in an American independent film. It's daring, sexy and redolent with regional atmosphere. All the actors work well above their heads. Many of you will probably hate it anyway.
One of the year's most unusual, subtle and thoroughly involving films.
Enigmatic, elliptical and mesmerizing, Monster's Ball invites myriad responses and interpretations.
This is one of those rare movies in which even people glimpsed only for a moment or two seem to have lives that ramify beyond the screen, as if the story were being witnessed rather than dramatized.
an Oprah-mistic movie in which people overcome a lifetime’s worth of bad habits by 'opening up.'
An unusual romance of unlikely people with Halle Berry in a stunning new and mature role.
Forster's glib presentation of interracial skin's allure feels ignorant and borderline offensive.
This is an affecting, thought-provoking film despite the plot contrivances on which it depends...a remarkably moving experience.
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