Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
66
Bandslam
45
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
29
Collector, The
23
Couples Retreat
80
District 9
61
Extract
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
60
Funny People
32
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
27
Gamer
41
G-Force
39
Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, The
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Love Happens
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
51
My Sister's Keeper
42
Orphan
28
Pandorum
63
Perfect Getaway, A
86
Ponyo![]()
35
Post Grad
48
Proposal, The
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
24
Sorority Row
83
Star Trek![]()
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
55
Taking Woodstock
47
Time Traveler's Wife
96
Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D![]()
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
88
Up![]()
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
72
Adela
39
Adventures of Power
78
Afghan Star
61
After the Storm
66
Afterschool
xx
All the Best
58
American Casino
72
Amreeka
48
Antichrist
73
Araya
62
Art & Copy
55
As Seen Through These Eyes
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
13
Beautiful Life, A
70
Beeswax
35
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71
Big Fan
66
Black Dynamite
51
Blind Date
xx
Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76
Bliss
35
Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57
Boys Are Back, The
45
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
70
Bronson
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
55
Casi Divas
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
59
Collapse
44
Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
67
Departures
xx
Dil Bole Hadippa
71
Disgrace
xx
Do Knot Disturb
70
Earth Days
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
xx
Eulogy for a Vampire
xx
Everyone Else
xx
Fatal Promises
56
Fifty Dead Men Walking
62
Five Minutes of Heaven
74
Flame & Citron
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
28
Free Style
xx
From Mexico with Love
50
Fuel
25
Gentlemen Broncos
50
Give Me Your Hand
58
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
52
Grace
64
Harmony and Me
81
Headless Woman, The![]()
xx
Heretics, The
63
Horse Boy, The
73
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
74
Humpday
94
Hurt Locker, The![]()
29
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16
If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75
In Search of Beethoven
83
In the Loop![]()
61
Intimate Enemies
42
Irene in Time
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
19
Labor Day
xx
Laila's Birthday
41
Little Ashes
41
Little Traitor, The
66
Liverpool
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
83
Maid, The![]()
xx
Ministers, The
59
More Than a Game
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
xx
Mystery Team
48
New York, I Love You
73
Night and Day
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34
Other Man, The
xx
Painter Sam Francis, The
54
Paper Heart
xx
Paradise
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
44
Peter and Vandy
35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx
Pretty Ugly People
65
Providence Effect, The
76
Rembrandt's J'accuse
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
40
Shrink
61
Skin
77
Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx
Skiptracers
46
Splinterheads
39
St. Trinian's
89
Still Walking![]()
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
55
Storm
65
Tetro
70
That Evening Sun
72
Thirst
xx
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61
Trucker
xx
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
66
Unmade Beds
66
Unmistaken Child
70
Visual Acoustics
55
Walt & El Grupo
67
Way We Get By, The
69
We Live in Public
64
Wedding Song, The
64
Where is Where?
xx
White on Rice
74
Woman in Berlin, A
69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx
You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Monster's Ball
EMAILPRINTLions Gate Films Inc.

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 33 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Milo Addica
Will Rokos
Directed by: Marc Forster
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 26, 2001
DVD: June 11, 2002
Running Time: 111 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong sexual content, language and violence
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle, Sean 'Puffy' Combs, and Coronji Calhoun
A hard-hitting Southern drama tempered by a story of powerful, life-changing love. It is the story of Hank (Thornton), an embittered prison guard working on Death Row in rural Georgia. He begins an unlikely but emotionally charged affair with Leticia (Berry), the wife of a man he has just executed. (Lions Gate Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Everthing Put Together Finding Neverland Stay Stranger Than Fiction The Kite Runner
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
As for myself, as Leticia rejoined Hank in the last shot of the movie, I was thinking about her as deeply and urgently as about any movie character I can remember.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It's a film in which complex issues are boiled down to human essences, not so much simplified as dramatized in the very best way.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Hank is but the latest of Thornton's strikingly taciturn characters in a whole string of movies, but for Berry, Leticia represents a big-screen breakthrough.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The movie's stroke of sheer genius is its wondrous ending.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
The raw intimacy of some of the scenes -- whether they take place at a diner, in the death house or in the bedroom -- is breathtaking.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
The movie holds you in thrall from first frame to last. Hatred is hatred unslaked. So is racism, ugliness, love, lust and sorrow.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Packs a dramatic wallop that makes it one of the year's best movies.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
This is as anti-Hollywood a film as I have seen in recent months, one which takes conventional plot ideas and uses them not to season a melodrama, but to enrich fully three-dimensional characters and create a forceful motion picture.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
The cast is uniformly superb, and Marc Forster's attentive direction gives proper weight to each perplexing emotion. Strip away the strident melodrama, and you have this season's moodiest, most adult love story.
Variety Robert Koehler
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."
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf
Well redeemed by its dank atmosphere and cracker-barrel performances.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
The kind of quiet, effective film that burrows under the viewer's skin and takes root before you've had a chance to realize that it's permeated your constitutional makeup.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Hate, love, bigotry, empathy and chance are the uninvited guests at Monster's Ball.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
For all its darkness and tragedy, Monster's Ball is a film that wants to be liked and Forster stumbles over his good intentions to win the audience over.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Its ethical and intellectual insights wane when the love story kicks in, weakening what might have been a much deeper movie. Still, its performances are wonderful to watch.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
The film has a lot of right in it, including an ending that's suitably uncertain, but fraught with possibilities.
Boston Globe Jay Carr
The kind of film that could easily be undone by its own high-minded ambitions and dissolve in a pall of uplift. But it stays the course and gives the season two of its notable performances.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
Dark and beautifully directed melodrama about the strange intersection of racism and emotional need.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Halle Berry is something else as Leticia Musgrove, the widow of an inmate who's just been executed by Hank and his crew, and that something else is commandingly passionate.
Film Threat Michael Dequina
Berry delivers an extraordinary performance that will startle even her most faithful fans.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector
A black waitress and a white corrections officer in rural Georgia experience more misery in the first hour of this movie than some people do in a lifetime, and to its credit the drama doesnt collapse under the weight.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
A traffic map of calls and responses, lessons and homework, wishes and fulfillment. All roads lead to acting-award nominations, but none lead to truth.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
A serious movie made by seriously talented people, and I never quite came 'round to it.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The film's elliptical character development sometimes renders the actors' work opaque; restraint is an underpracticed virtue, but even it can be taken to excess.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
This movie hyperventilates with pessimism to the point of perversity.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Handled more delicately, Monster's Ball could have been a fine little movie about human beings' capacity for growth and change. As it is, it's less than half a fine movie. The great surprise is that its actors come through in the clutch.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
In its exploitation of human misery, Monster's Ball doesn't just invite cynicism; it provokes hostility.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
An arty sleepwalk. Thornton has developed a style of acting that goes beyond minimal into the near nonexistent.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
When a movie wrenches you with the deaths of children then leaves you with nothing to take home but your confusion, it can make you thirsty for the blood of directors.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.2 (out of 10) based on 33 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
[Anonymous] gave it a7:
Barley any sex? what the hell does that have to do with a good movie. you guys are pretty stupid. Halle beery won and deserved that Oscar. she was the first African American woman to ever win one. she's a good actress and i only defend movies and actresses when people such as below give it low ratings because "there wasn't any nudity." give me a break
Blake J. gave it a9:
The most depressing movie I have ever seen, by far. Halle Berry's performance is mesmerizing. The scene in the hospital brings tears to my eyes, every time I watch it. For some reason, although it brings me down when I watch it, I watch it several times a year.
Pompè E. gave it a0:
This film was terrible. I was embarrassed, actually. How did Berry win the Oscar? She deserved the Razzie! Bad film. And barely any sex!
Ryan K. gave it a0:
Nothing but cheap, depressing & degrading movie. Doesn't do anything for black women nor black people in General. The only excuse for this movie is so Hollywood could see her screwing the O' Massa butt naked & that's a dirty cheap excuse to win an Oscar. Monsterball is nothing to be proud of. GET REAL!!!! Oh, & I get sick of people making excuses saying Hallie's character was raped when she was willing to perform like a weak needy hoe.
Mike M. gave it a 10:
Excellent! edge of your seat film. It will engross you totally!
Rodrigo R. gave it a 2:
The only thing that might have made this film worth the time waste was Halley Berry's acting... and it's just not enough.
Pat C. gave it a 6:
Engaging premise. Trails off somewhat to vaguely state whatever it was it was trying to say, something about moving on as either a insightful decision or an inevitable process. Either way, what the characters move on to seems to promise more vicious turns of fate in the future. Salvaged by dramatic performances - Berry is quite good. Admittedly a show which can be timely and beneficial for people in certain circumstances.
