12 Years A Slave won the Oscar for Best Picture this year. If this was released, say, 25 years ago, this would have received little praise and won very little awards. That just shows how far downhill Hollywood has gone. I can see why people would love it, but place this years ago and nobody would. What is wrong with this? A well-respected black man (Ejiofor) is kidnapped and sold into slavery where he must witness and be victimized to extreme cruelty by his owners. Other than showing how brutal slavery can be, there is no point and the film goes nowhere. Just Negroes getting beaten throughout the whole movie because they can. I know that this movie is supposed to be hard to watch, but that's no excuse to leave important film components out. Pay It Forward was sad, but it has theme, it gets somewhere, there is plot development. 2007's The Girl Next Door had a theme, the plot actually went somewhere. 12 Years A Slave just didn't have a point or story. Django Unchained is a slavery movie that actually gets places. 12 years just repeats the same thing for over two hours. Wolf of Wall Street was more worthy of an Oscar win than this and Gravity, because it actually has a story that unfolds.

However, everybody did a mighty fine job of acting. Since Ejiofor is the main character, it is only natural that he would be the best. In fact, I think that he gave the best performance of the year. Sure DiCaprio and McConoughey were worthy, but this is the kind of acting that always moves people the most. Plus people rave this as being the best film of the year, so him not winning was a surprise. But McCounoghey was worthy and I'm glad he won. So I may not have liked this film very much, but the acting (mainly Ejiofor) is the only reason why I would see the again. Other than that, there's no point, like the movie itself.

1/4