Monday, February 25, 2002

Monster's Ball (2001)

Don't have a whole lot to say about this one. Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry and Heath Ledger are effective, but the film takes over an hour to find its bearings and is wounded by some strange decisions in editing and camera placement (especially during the film's already-notorious love scene). Ends up being fairly affecting anyway, though I'm not sure why it was necessary to make Berry's character suffer only slightly less than Job. It deserves points for bringing up a stupid cliche near the story's end expressely for the purpose of ignoring it.

Grade: B-