Monster's Ball said more without words than most actors say talking for hours.

This complex racial story packs a dramatic, painful wallop that makes for one of the best pictures of the year for me--thanks to the performances of Billy Bob Thorton and Halle Berry.

Another rare movie where the less you know the better.

Containing two outstanding performances, Monster's Ball takes us into a world of pain, grief, and guilt, where emotional needs outweigh common sense.

It's a place where racial tension is undone by neediness and anguish, and sex is used as an emotional placebo.

This is not a feel-good movie, but it is thoughtful, insightful, and brilliantly done.

The film's characters and atmosphere are the most important concerns of this picture, a story of two people trying to accomplish a recovery in the face of unspeakable sadness.

Both of the stars are souls desperately in search of connections. They play different parts that reveal some suprising parallels along the way.

Everybody, who dies, dies in the first half of the movie, so if you can make it through that, the second half is a love story.

This is one of the most twisting enactments of emotional need to hit the screen in a long time.