12 Years a Slave (2013)

Tags

12 years a slave, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Drama, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender, Movie, Paul Dano

I got you this lamp…so you can see better how horrible I am…

Definitely not the feel good movie of the year, but a movie that does manage to be enjoyable despite its really tough subject matter.  It’s beautiful to look at, has mostly good performances, and looks at a kind of slavery story we don’t always hear much about.

I guess the idea of being kidnapped from the north and being brought to the south to be sold into slavery isn’t any more or less cruel than any other pathway to slavery, but it certainly feels that way when you see it played out on screen.  I guess the main character, Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor), being an educated black man in the north, has a sense that he is removed from the nightmare of slavery.  So when he wakes to find himself in chains, it’s not just shocking, but totally unfair.  Thus the mood is set for the rest of the film, where we the viewer constantly hope that his real identity will be discovered, and the illegality of his slavery will be revealed because it’s just not fair that HE would be a slave.  Which, of course, we realize is true for EVERYBODY who is a slave.

Some of what we see, we have seen many times before.  If it’s a movie about slavery, it’s going to have whipping, and cruelty, and the occasional sympathetic white person, but this movie does some of those same things in a way that makes it really hit home just how horrible and bleak it all was.  Plus it pulls out a few scenes that were certainly new to me.

A few of the accents could have been better, and Brad Pitt’s character (or maybe just his appearance) felt forced, but overall the acting was top notch.  And hey, good to see Paul Dano step outside of the box and play a character unlike anything I’ve seen him play!

Overall, I guess you could call this a must-see, even if just to remind yourself of how bad things can be, and how crazy it is that people are capable of such horrors.  Seriously, this stuff happened.  Not that long ago. Ugh.

8.0/10

2012 (2009)

Tags

2012, Action, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Drama, John Cusack, Movie, Oliver Platt, Science Fiction, Thandie Newton

I don't have time to argue, we've got yellow dots all over the country! look at the map for cryin' out loud!!

PG-13

John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover

Kate: Do you think people change?
Jackson: By “people” you mean me…?
Kate: Yes.  Do you think you’ve changed since we separated?
Jackson: I seem to eat a lot more cereal now…

The Sun hates us, so it’s sending mutant neutrinos into the Earth’s core, causing it to overheat and make the crust unstable.  This causes shifts of the Earth’s plates, resulting in catastrophic earthquakes and such.  Can humanity survive?  Can love survive…?

I’m sure eventually somebody will come up with something even bigger and crazier than this movie, but for now, this film – wherein the Earth basically starts to fall apart right under our feet – will stand as the biggest disaster flick of all time.  I’d guess a large portion of the world’s population is done away with in this one, and we get to see a lot of it.  Earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, geysers, volcanic eruptions…it’s all there.  Also present are many disaster movie cliches.

– There is, of course, a black President.  Though Danny Glover is not playing Barack Obama, despite it being set in the 2010-2012 range.
– Our hero is an every-man, separated from his wife, and doesn’t have a great relationship with his kids (his son calls him Jackson).
– Said hero becomes an action star when required.  He can stunt drive a limo and ramp an RV over a 30 foot wide crack in the ground.
– The president gives a big moving speech.
– There’s some nut-job (Woody Harrelson) who sees all of this destruction coming before everyone else and screams about it for a large portion of the movie.
– Kids in peril.
– There’s an unlikable, slimy, second-tier government official who is constantly at odds with the more heroic lead scientist in the movie.

I’m sure I could go on…but the movie does that for me…for 2 and 1/2 hours.  There were a lot of scenes that I felt could have been cut from this movie to knock it down to a more reasonable 2 hours.  I’m not against longer movies as long as they have enough content to justify the length.

Regardless of all of that, I must admit that it was still reasonably entertaining.  It had a relatively serious tone to it.  I like that it wasn’t winking at the camera every 5 minutes like so many big blockbusters do.  It was more like only every 20 minutes.  Plus, having Cusack in the lead role helped as well.  He makes some of the little comedic moments slightly more believable.

If you’re looking to see a bunch of stuff get blown up and destroyed in various other ways, this is the movie for you.  I doubt anything in it will surprise you, and none of the performances will bowl you over, but at least it won’t bore you too much.  And you better watch it now before…ya know…it’s too late…

Start listening to the doomsday wackos, people!

10 – 1.5 for being overlong due to extraneous scenes – 2.2 for too many cliches = 6.3