12 Years a Slave (2013)

[ChD]

So I'm the only one who didn't like the movie? F from me.

I do not know why everyone say "the best movie of the year" because this movie was so boringggg. I hope another movie will win at Oscar. 

 

I understand that some people might not like it, but giving it an F seems kinda harsh

[eXtacy]

So I'm the only one who didn't like the movie? F from me.

I do not know why everyone say "the best movie of the year" because this movie was so boringggg. I hope another movie will win at Oscar. 

 

You're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

[thunder storm]

I understand that some people might not like it, but giving it an F seems kinda harsh

I think you are from Romania. Right? Well, you can read here my opinion about this movie under the name: cameleonii. 

 

You're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

I'm scared.

[Lordmandeep]

I think its a great film but people were hyping it up like it was a kind of a film that you would never experience before.

 

 

It was not but a solid A- but I dont think it deserves to win best picture. 

 

It one of those films that is really good but the subject matter and message make you praise the film more. 

Edited January 4, 2014 by Lordmandeep

[eXtacy]

Such an emotional film, though not the as perfect as everyone is raving about. B+

[Hatebox]

I'd be fine with it winning Best Picture. A movie whose MO is to unflinchingly depict the horrors of slavery is always going to be hard to get right, but it felt like McQueen and the cast found a way to make it shocking without sensationalist. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I felt lucky to be free after watching it.

 

Only nitpick was Pitt's bizarre anti-slavery diatribe. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Hatebox

[Killimano3]

There wasn't a lot about the movie that specifically stuck out to me but it was such an emotional tale that it made up for it. The ending especially was really well done. Definitely one of the top movies of the year

[Heretic]

Credits just rolled. Incredible in every sense.

[Films]

Credits just rolled. Incredible in every sense.

When did you go? My credits rolled around the same timeAnyway, A from me

[mattmav45]

Brad Pitt remains a sore thumb in an otherwise fantastic film. Simply a huge WTF, and a shame in all honesty. His character being "Canadian" was icing on the cake, simply brutal.Rest is the film is a beast.

[ainsleyb]

Just watched this for a second time and it will be an absolute travesty if a film as powerful and moving as this loses to the light and completely underwhelming American Hustle come Oscar night.

[ladyevenstar22]

A+ 

 

this movie was very hard to watch esp as a black woman , just have to put it out there!

 

poor lupita character ill-treated by her master and his wife for being his favourite , this movie holds back no punch in putting stuff in your face

 

the whipping,  the punishments  , etc  dear me it felt too real, way too real ...

 

i found solomon a wee bit naive in the beginning but without which there'd be no horrifying story to tell but ejiofor chiwetel is really good , how can you not feel for him , and as horrible as that was , coming back home must have been quite traumatizing too after surviving that ! he missed out on his kids growing up ...

 

he's lucky he met up with brad pitt as i felt he was close to being broken in , slowly but methodically , little stuff showing you he was learning to be a slave, i hated that scene where he started singing , to me him not singing was a sign of defiance , a couple more years and who's to say he'd remember his name ...

another scene i dislike is the masters preaching sunday or saturday mass , what a boatload of hypocrisy , how they ever lived for so long with themselves is beside me but its like that fallen overseer said you tell yourself whatever you need to for it to be right in your head so slaves were property 

 

michael fassbender you sir will pay for your sins , he was a mean drunk !

 

per bias opinion but i'm mad for benedict cumberbatch i can't say anything mean about him when he has that romantic flop of hair doing its thing , ok so he was a nicer slave owner but eliza was right he was still a slave owner and was never going to help him to that degree ( question of cholera or plague treatment huh?) but at the end of the day they all viewed them the same property whether they dislike the whole business they never thought to question it 

 

i actually enjoyed the score in this and the cinematography also , all these aspects contribute to making a comprehensive movie !

 

to think that we went from slavery , blacks fighting for their rights to read write learn , have a decent living , freedoms so that today's youth can throw it away carelessly prefering it to a lifestyle and culture of vulgarity and violence mixed in with an inexplicable posture of hostility 

 

can a person seriously sit down watch lupita then watch j-law and say tiffany 2.0 is a better acted role whuutt?

 

12YAS for best picture ! 

 

one thing i was curious about after the film as we didnt see too much , the life of free black men in those days 

most movies are usually about  the slave experience  but what about those who were born free men 

 

i think that's why 12yas works as a new take on the slavery experience

 

ps: i sincerely say F**K YOU  to my theatre for not making it a priority to show such an important movie esp on an island in the caribbean , its all fine to laugh at crap like madea but for crying out loud being

a little more in touch with history would be welcome from time to time 

 

ah and also this movie blows the  butler out of the water ! that's why its in and the butler ain't! (still love u oprah  )

[dashrendar44]

Lupita better fucking wins that Oscar. That scene when she begged Solomon to drown her because she felt that miserable life of her was no worth living is totally heart-wrenching.

 

The "Roll Jordan roll" song shows how Solomon who is struggling to stay the free man he is within slowly becomes Platt out of desperation. Also the scene when he is seen hung on a rope as the day passes by, McQueen use of cinematography to illustrate how slavery was constructed through time and space as a social/cultural system is absolute genius. Chiwetel better wins that Oscar too. (Sorry Leo but sticking a candle in your ass and creeps your junkie way to a Lamborghini making funny faces don't compare at any level to what Ejiofor and Nyong'o did there physically and mentally as actors).

 

His "sorry" to his family at the end is totally devastating after all the trials he has been put through for 12 years. You see how humble a man he was.

 

As aside point, I find it interesting, unlike Django Unchained fantasy, that Solomon Northup was born a free man and knowing McQueen sense of uneasiness, you can feel at times how Solomon is totally disconnected and out of place among its slaves companions when he is kidnapped and thrown into slavery. There are uneasy moments in which you can feel Solomon just can't accept as a free Northerner to be treated like those southern slaves. That kind of existential spleen in which a black character reflects on his condition and self-consciously realizes how his skin color is something that conditioned his whole life in that era when he thought he had overcome that burden by being born free. He struggles to stay Solomon the free erudite individual of New Jersey whereas every slavers try to demean him as Platt the typical slave of the antebellum South he is not. You don't see that kind of grey area being explored that much on that very subject.

 

I saw this movie with my mum and we were weeping all the way through. This movie is haunting and yeah it is necessary to show what it was like because today there are still naysayers trying to minimize the atrocity and the debasement of it all like "It was not that bad, see, there were given shelters, food and could marry their slavers" or "slavery has always existed since roman empire so what? We get it." No, you fuckin' don't and 12 Years A Slave unflinchingly shows you why.

 

A+. (despite Zimmer's unshameful re-use of Journey To The Line/Time cue to the point of being annoyingly distracting and Brad Pitt's appearance smirking his way out of a SNL skit parodying Lincoln).

Edited January 28, 2014 by dashrendar44

[RobinHood26]

Fuck yeah Dash I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Jack Nevada]

Masterpiece. 

[ladyevenstar22]

Brad Pitt remains a sore thumb in an otherwise fantastic film. Simply a huge WTF, and a shame in all honesty. His character being "Canadian" was icing on the cake, simply brutal.Rest is the film is a beast.

i feel brad pitt character sticking out might serve a purpose in sense it took an outsider to connect with solomon's plight and whose values would allow him to extend a helping hand and do the right thing, solomon after all his troubles and escaping near death thanks to people who let him down , like that ex overseer who he trusted , he's so on his guard by that time that he's cautious when he overhears brad pitt and fassbender convo !

 

what a relief it must have been to hear someone who had that perspective and yet it takes some nudging to get him talking about the truth of his circumstances ,as we saw even those who felt for him but were from the south never tried to help him or free him but only make his circumstances a little bit more comfortable (whatever that meant more like make their conscience comfy) that itself was sad to see!

so yeah i don't mind brad pitt character as its a very small yet pivotal part in pushing the plot along or else solomon would still be there like poor patsey and company ...

 

gah it broke my heart to see her being left behind ...and the scenery as he left the plantation felt like waking up after a nightmare as it dissipates into thin air and you're still not sure you're up as feeling of terror lingers

 

i like to think he tried to help her escape eventually through the underground railroad patsey deserves a happy end too

[dashrendar44]

It's not like that Bass person didn't exist IRL so McQueen didn't have much choice story-wise if he wanted to pay respect and be true to Northup's story. He really did help Solomon to escape out of trust because as a liberal canadian he was not raised in the US South being mentally hinged by slavery's system unlike that ex-overseer (I was surprised to see Garrett Dillahunt in that role, excellent actor).

 

I think if Dillahunt and Pitt had switched roles, people would not be so critical how tonally bizarre it is to see Brad Pitt, the movie producer, lecturing everybody about the injustice of slavery in the middle of antebellum south like he came from 21st century in a Delorean.

Edited January 28, 2014 by dashrendar44

[MrPink]

It's not like that Bass person didn't exist IRL so McQueen didn't have much choice story-wise if he wanted to pay respect and be true to Northup's story. He really did help Solomon to escape out of trust because as a liberal canadian he was not raised in the US South being mentally hinged by slavery's system unlike that ex-overseer (I was surprised to see Garrett Dillahunt in that role, excellent actor).

 

I think if Dillahunt and Pitt had switch roles, people would not be so critical how tonally bizarre it is to see Brad Pitt, the movie producer, lecturing everybody about the injustice of slavery in the middle of antebellum south like he came from 21st century in a Delorean.

 

I think what I found most distracting about it was that he was still channeling Aldo Raine from Inglourious Basterds.

[lab276]

An unrelenting film.A

[Omario]

A good film but slightly overrated. i didnt find the acting to be anything special apart for Chiwetel. 

 

B+