12 Years A Slave (2013)
I've been meaning to watch this for a long time. And was it worth the wait? Well, I'm not sure. I should note that the one thing I cannot possibly fault the film for is its performances.
Obviously there's Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead role, an excellent British actor who really ought to have started receiving a wide range of central roles after this showcase of his incredible talent. I mean let's face it, the main thing people know him for is as the villain in "Serenity" (where he was also amazing btw). No one really noticed him much as Denzel Washington's partner in "Inside Man", no one comments on his appearance as one of the figures opposing Clive Owen in "Children of Men", his role in the under-appreciated action movie "Salt" is pretty small (though Ejiofor makes the most of it nonetheless) and pretty much nobody has seen "Kinky Boots" where he is a central character (a flamoboyant drag queen in fact). And since "12 Years A Slave" where the hell has he been? I mean, come on! Give him a role in a Marvel movie or something, everyone else seems to be getting a role in those.
Anyway, first we get Ejiofor, then Benedict Cumberbatch turns up as a slave owner, then Michael Fassbender turns up as a slave owner. And then finally Brad Pitt turns up as the good guy, speaking out against slavery. And yes, Brad Pitt is great too.
My actual problem with the film is that it seems to have no sense of pace or tone. There's no storytelling here. It's just misery porn. The movie begins in the middle... for absolutely no good reason. The movie then rushes to our protagonist's kidnapping so that it can flashback to his time as a free man, but little of this re-ordering of the character's timeline seems to serve any real purpose. The director seems to love long lingering shots of Chiwetel Ejiofor looking pained and it just became annoying after a while. The only purpose to any of it is to say "isn't this horrifying and uncomfortable?"
The soundtrack is all over the place. There's a few points where the music seems dramatic, but there's no real drama here except in the sense that everything which happens from start to finish is repulsive. The point where I became particularly aware of how much this film relies on the performances is the scene where Ejiofor returns to his family. (I mean, it's called "12 Years A Slave" not "died in slavery".) This should be the real emotional moment of the film and it just struck me as cold. That is, until Chiwetel Ejiofor starts delivering his lines and brings some colour into an otherwise wholly bland scene.
It's just annoying that the filmmaker has what could be a very compelling story and is doing little in the way of storytelling. It's a bunch of scenes stuck together and it feels like there's no real artistry to any of it. If it weren't for the stellar cast involved, I'd be falling asleep. The actors make me care, in spite of the plodding, cold, bland filming style.
This could have been the incredible cinematic experience everyone told me it would be. But sadly the filmmaker seems to have little understanding of how to present a gripping story. While I'm not his biggest fan and while I know his work can be cheesy at times, I couldn't help but feel that Spielberg would know what to do with a story like this.
C+
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
I was pretty blown away. Matthew McConaughey is absolutely great in this, as is Jared Leto and for a story about HIV it doesn't make us spend a lot of time watching people cry. This is about a character who decides to focus on living his life, even when illness is threatening to finish him off. It reminds me of "Puncture" (bizarrely titled "Injustice" here in the UK) starring Chris Evans.
The film refuses to be your typical tearjerker. Our homophobic protagonist learns to spend time with gay people, but we never get cheesy spiritual life-changing moment where he suddenly recognises his mistakes in the past. Deaths in the film are not marked with a montage of weeping. And for all the good any character does, every character in the film has their own personal genuine flaws.
Of all the performances, I'm afraid I think that Jennifer Garner lets the side down. She doesn't have a fantastic amount of range and I found that whenever she was on screen, I found it hard to think of her as a genuine character. There's something unnatural about her performance. This is all the more of a problem in the third act when the film starts lagging a bit. Jennifer Garner is supposed to become more important at this stage and I'm afraid it's to the detriment of the film.
That being said, this was more than a solid film. I felt both moved and entertained. The central performances from McConaughey and Leto are brilliant and the twists and turns in the story are compelling. The flawed characters felt genuine (which is possibly one reason why Jennifer Garner comes off as flat, what with her having more of a goody-two-shoes role).
Of course, while we might not spend all out time watching people cry, there are people crying and getting angry, violent. There's a whole plethora of emotion on display here and the film guides the audience expertly through every moment. This was so very nearly an A-grade movie for me. Were it not for some unfortunate lagging and, as is often the case with biopics, some uncertainty from the filmmakers on how to end the narrative, I would be hyping the hell out of this movie.
B+