neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Monster
	Patty Jenkins Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson, Lee Tergesen, Pruitt Taylor Vince 2003		Charlize Theron, already a movie glamour girl of the highest order, enters the ranks of modern cinema's great actresses with an extraordinary performance in "Monster." As stunning as a Taser jolt, this psychological docudrama from writer/director Patty Jenkins does its best to peer into the soul of Aileen Wuornos, notorious as America's first female serial killer. It succeeds to the point where Wuornos, played by an unrecognizable, thoroughly horrifying Theron, earns a measure of sympathy. Wuornos was a drifter and prostitute who picked up men on the Florida highways during the '80s. Abused as a youngster, filled with rage as a woman and desperate to survive, Wuornos is on the brink of suicide when she meets timid lesbian Selby Wall at a bar. They fall in love, and, to free Selby from dependence on her disapproving family, the two women move in together. To pay their bills and, thus, keep her lover happy, Wuornos continues hooking, and her anger begins to consume her. Idiosyncratic Christina Ricci was an understandable casting choice as Selby, and she's spot on. But the radical selection of Theron as Wuornos pays big dividends. Beyond packing on the pounds and taking on some scarily realistic make-up, Theron becomes Wuornos before our eyes, getting under the skin of a disturbed, destructive creature.