Monster's Ball

Director Marc Forster, winner of Best Feature at Slamdance for his debut film Loungers (1996) and the "Someone to Watch" Independent Spirit Award for his indie drama Everything Put Together (2000), follows up those acclaimed projects with this intense, racially charged romance. Billy Bob Thornton ...more

For the first time since Losing Isaiah in 1995, Halle Berry steps into a role she's shown reluctance to play: a working-class woman of limited intelligence and refinement, who speaks with a dialect and vocabulary that invokes cruel stereotypes. In the dreadful comedy B.A.P.S. and the wicked satire Bulworth, she offered spoofing variations on that character type, but only here does she stare it down. The result is not only the performance of her career, but one of the best onscreen in 2001. The ...more