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DVD Monster's Ball
The unflinching realism and searing performances of Monster's Ball are stunning in all the connotations of the word. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and Leticia (Halle Berry) inhabit stark, queasy realities of the contemporary South, he as a death row corrections officer and she as the soon-to-be widow of an inmate (Sean Combs) whose execution Hank helps conduct. In the aftermath of the execution, both lose their children to tragic deaths and they form an unlikely bond. In the hands of lesser participants, the fateful plot might strain credibility and seem tailored to allow for liberal sermonizing about the obvious wrongs of our legal justice system, but director Marc Forster and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer balance the contentious nature of the film's issues--the death penalty, racism both overt and subtle, interracial couples--with a flawless attention to character and visual detail that completely convinces. The moral ambiguity of both central characters is given full voice as our sympathy is drawn out reluctantly at first but all the more resolutely in the end. Thornton draws from seemingly limitless resources to deliver yet another outstanding performance, but it is Halle Berry who is a revelation as she sustains throughout the complex tenor of brutality witnessed and raw courage defined. --Fionn Meade
This story really got to me. It made me see that when you come right down to it, no matter what your race, creed or color, we all have the capacity to want to be loved and to give love.
Here you have two people. The man is somewhat a bigot from a very bigotted family, he is in law enforcement and he has learned over the years to shut himself off from the world. You have the woman, a black woman. Her life has been a struggle from the time she was concieved in the womb. Her husband dies on death row (unknown to her is that the man was his prison guard), she drinks too much, tries to do good by her son but fails and he too dies.
These two come together in their loss. Sharing themselves with each other, they are unable to not need and want each other.
This movie was fantastic! Halle Berry did the performance of her life. She shows the pain and struggle of every pretty but poor young black woman in this country. Billy Bob Thornton made us hate him and then care for him despite all his shortcomings. Also Peter Boyle was one of the ugliest representations of white racism I've seen in a long time. Boyle's racist wasn't any tobacco chewing, moonshine swilling, Klansmen. He was worse. He was a sickly, old granddaddy who raised a family and made a career out of guarding people whose skin color he hated. This is the face of white racism in America nowadays, not hooded Klansmen and blackbooted Nazis.
Heath Ledger is a doll baby and is making a great career for himself ("Ned Kelly"/"Four Feathers") in this movie he plays Billy Bob Thornton's negelected, emotionally battered only son. His life was tragic and so much a shame.
Black Guys "Reviewing" This Movie Need To Quit Whining
All the black men who cannot handle the sex scene between Halle Berry or Billy Bob Thornton should really get a hold of themselves and calm the hell down!
Contrary to the popular myth going around black male moviegoer circles, there are WAAAY more films showing interracial romance/sex between black men and white women? (Save The Last Dance, O, The End Of Violence, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, Hustle And Flow, Love Field, etc.) And, on the rare occasion,
when we do get to see vice versa we got to hear and read angry, spiteful comments. PLEASE!
This isn't even a movie about interracial sex or relationships. It's about two people in a small Southern town in pain, gravitating towards each other because, depite all their differences, nobody else is there for them. Both ease the emotional burdens of the other one in ways no other black man or white woman can. Because down deep inside the color of their skins is less important than the tragic loss of child. That bonds them closer than race or nationality.
The sex scene was not intended to be erotic or arousing. If people see it that way, it is a shame. The sex these two have is really a yearning for life. They are both psycholigically and emotionally damaged. This wasn't any get yer freak on late at night on the sly interracial encounter.
Grow up people!
Look at me. I'm a non-rascist!
This is pure simplistic preachy garbage along similar lines as Disney's 'Remember the Titans'. Just a little more edgy but still the same cotton candy 'rascism is bad' message done up all super sugary for your consumption.
First things first, Halle Berry really reveals the blatant charade she was playing about not wanting to do nudity when negotiating 2 million dollars to briefly flash her breasts in Swordfish. She shows as much as she can without it becoming a porn film in Monster's ball in a very explicit sex scene with Billy Bob Thorton and all with no reservations or shyness whatsoever.
Great suspension of belief is required as Leticia unknowingly falls in love to the man who executed her husband for whatever crime he was convicted of.
Of course, Billy Bob comes with the baggage of racial prejudiced culture and family. And typical fashion for these types of movies, they are brought together by circumstances and learn not only to tolerate but to truly care for each other.
It all comes so easy for the gorgeous Halle Berry and the hideous Billy Bob. One minute Billy Bob is harassing black neighbor kids because they are black. The next he is in love with a black woman.
And as easy as the prejudices disintegrate, the prejudices reimerge and cause problems. This is the most insulting aspect of this movie.
Leticia and BBT (whatever his character name was) are now in love and Leticia comes to visit ole BBT. There she comes across his father played by Peter Boyle who says some rascist things. Well, the character of Leticia is presented as a truely shallow person and simpleton. She runs off hating the BBT character and this is a HUGE obstacle in their relationship being unable to trust BBT as not being a rascist as well.
Apparently, the writers see fit to have the Leticia character be such an unreasonable dullard that she transfers any rascist sentiments by anyone to apply also to how BBT feels about her.
Just as if a butterfly has rascist thoughts in a corn field in Illinois, it can cause a chain reaction and become genocide in Indonesia. So it is that Leticia and BBT break up due to the rascist perspective of BBT's father. It's all so hard to overcome because Leticia won't talk to BBT anymore to know he isn't a rascist also.
The movie is another simplistic feel good story designed for extra-segregated types who like to proclaim "I have (Black/White) friends and I consider them my equals."
Despite being complete garbage otherwise, I did have a fondness for a certain scene. BBT brings his rascist dad Peter Boyle to the old people's home. During the interview, the representative states "You must really love your father". BBT's reply, "Not really".
It is simplistic garbage like this movie that shows there still is a long way to go in regards to examining racial tensions.
If you ever need dramatic proof that adultery is inevitably destructive, look no further than Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful. Drawing inspiration from Claude Chabrol's 1969 film La Femme Infidèle, the director of Fatal Attraction is mining similar territory here, but this grownup thriller is more intimate than Lyne's dead-bunny potboiler, probing more deeply into the rush of conflicting emotions provoked by infidelity. In what many critics praised as the role of her career, Diane Lane plays the instigator of emotional turmoil, a seemingly happy housewife and fundraiser who cheats on her devoted husband (Richard Gere, in a welcomed change of pace) when she casually encounters a seductive Frenchman (cliché alert!) played by Olivier Martinez. Allowing his actors... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Diane Lane - Richard Gere - Olivier Martinez Director(s): Adrian Lyne DVD Release Date: Released the 17 December 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Swordfish is a superficial movie, so let's address the superficial facts: Halle Berry was well paid to bare her breasts in this gratuitous cyber-action thriller, and while Berry's many fans will enjoy a cheap drool at the actress's expense, her brief topless scene doesn't justify this insipid parade of glossy violence from the director of 2000's Gone in 60 Seconds. Add yet another notch in John Travolta's bad-movie belt, and you've got Hollywood bankruptcy in full blossom. Go ahead, marvel at director Dominic Sena's biggest money shot--a 360-degree pan as a robbery hostage is blown to bits by a bomb that pelts a surrounding SWAT squad with deadly ball bearings.
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Original Sin belongs in the "so bad it's good" category of languid potboilers, offering enough nudity, sexual chemistry, and far-fetched plotting to make it an enjoyable lazy-day diversion. Based on Cornell Woolrich's novel Waltz into Darkness (previous filmed by François Truffaut as Mississippi Mermaid) and set in turn-of-the-century Cuba, the film traces a tailspin of amorous obsession when coffee plantation owner Luis (Antonio Banderas) discovers that his American mail-order bride (Angelina Jolie) is not the plain wife he'd expected, but a beautiful, scheming thief who's after his fortune. The movie asserts that love is truly blind, but absurd twists of plot make Luis appear more stupid than passionate. Writer-director Michael Cristofer fared better with... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Antonio Banderas - Angelina Jolie Director(s): Michael Cristofer DVD Release Date: Released the 26 March 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Critics have universally praised Charlize Theron's performance in Monster, and the praise, for once, is astonishingly deserved. The gorgeous star of The Italian Job and The Cider House Rules vanishes into the character of Aileen Wuornos, a real-life serial killer and prostitute who murdered at least seven men in Florida. Monster traces her relationship with a young woman named Selby (Christina Ricci, The Ice Storm, Buffalo 66), which intertwines with Wuornos's murder spree. This remarkable movie finds compassion for Wuornos but unflinchingly faces her brutal crimes; Theron expresses this woman's horrific life history without softening her terrifying, dead-eyed stare. This is a gripping, devastating performance, a physical and psychological... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlize Theron - Christina Ricci - Bruce Dern Director(s): Patty Jenkins DVD Release Date: Released the 01 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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In terms of alluring female nudity, Swimming Pool shows a lot, but it's what remains concealed that gives this erotic thriller a potent, voyeuristic charge. With his Hitchcockian handling of secrets and lies, prolific French director François Ozon reunites with his Under the Sand star, Charlotte Rampling, to tell a seductive tale of murder and complicity, beginning when British mystery novelist Sarah Morton (Rampling) seeks peace and relaxation at her publisher's French villa, only to find his brash, sexually liberated daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) arriving shortly thereafter to disrupt her solitary reverie. What begins as mutual annoyance turns into something more sinister and duplicitous, alternating between Julie's predatory sex with men and Sarah's observant,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charlotte Rampling - Ludivine Sagnier - Charles Dance Director(s): François Ozon DVD Release Date: Released the 23 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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