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12 Years A Slave
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man and a violin artist. He has a happy and peaceful life with his wife and two children in New York until he was kidnapped by con-men who sold him into slavery.
26 July 1966, Tenafly, New Jersey, USA
5 November 1968, Greenville, Mississippi, USA
1 April 1982, Culver City, California, USA
28 August 2003, Houma, Louisiana, USA
26 April 1959, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
17 December 1974, Tampa, Florida, USA
11 November 1977, Dallas, Texas, USA
2 April 1977, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany
February 26, 2017
McQueen has not only created his finest work to date, but also a potential modern masterpiece.
February 26, 2017
The end result has momentum and meaning, and slides in amidst McQueen's excellent efforts; the only thing missing, particularly from a director known for his primal jolts and punishing journeys, is the visceral reaction.
February 26, 2017
Pitiless, heartless and exceptionally intense, 12 Years a Slave is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
February 26, 2017
Ejiofor's performance is typically unshowy yet subtle, conveying a dignity and humanity that the film needs in the face of such unfathomable injustice.
February 26, 2017
12 Years a Slave is a film of searing sincerity and insight, whose central characters are drawn with real complexity. McQueen's third film doesn't just slide slavery under the microscope, it holds it there.
December 31, 2013
So overpowering is this film's simple, horrible, and almost entirely true story that it's hard to get enough distance on 12 Years a Slave to poke at its inner workings.
February 26, 2017
It is this film's unfortunate paradox that a story with so much at stake, rendered in what could only be good faith, should translate to so little.
January 13, 2015
It speaks to the courage and resilience of one man, the savagery of many, and the potential, for both good and for ill, in us all.
December 31, 2013
Every scene of 12 Years a Slave, and almost every shot, conveys some penetrating truth about America's original sin.
December 10, 2013
The power of McQueen's movie is in its declaratory style: This happened. That is all, and that is everything.
January 07, 2014
The cumulative emotional effect is devastating: the final scenes are as angry, as memorable, as overwhelming as anything modern cinema has to offer.
January 13, 2015
In its own saintly manner, it's as exploitative as anything critics accused Django Unchained of being, minus Tarantino's eye for idiosyncrasy and sense of humor.
