Watch Online 12 Years a Slave (2013) - MovieTimeUs

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Synopsis:

Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave stars Chiwetel Ejifor as Solomon Northup, a free black man in 1840s America. He makes his living as a fiddle player, and his wife is a teacher. He is shanghaied by a pair of nefarious white men, and soon finds himself on a ship headed to New Orleans where he is informed he will be called Platt and is sold into slavery by an unscrupulous businessman (Paul Giamatti). As he toils away for the kindhearted but conflicted plantation owner Mr. Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), who recognizes that Platt is both educated and an artist, he butts head with Ford's underlings, especially the casually cruel Tibeats (Paul Dano). After they have a violent altercation, Ford fears for his slave's life and sells him to Mr. Epps (Michael Fassbender), an alcoholic sadist who owns a cotton plantation. Though Epps reads from the bible to his property, as he frequently refers to his slaves, he is himself not immune to sins of the flesh. He has taken the young Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) - his best cotton picker -- as his lover, and this doesn't sit well at all with his severe wife (Sarah Paulson), whose particular hatred for blacks and her jealousy fuels her many degrading actions toward Patsey. Solomon bides his time, attempts to preserve a modicum of self-respect, and waits for the chance to reclaim his rightful name as well as his family.

Review:

With his first two films, Hunger and Shame, British director Steve McQueen showed a masterful command of style and an ambition to tackle important topics. His third movie, 12 Years a Slave, takes on the institution of American slavery, a subject that comes so loaded with potential blowback that few artists ever attempt to deal with it head-on. He succeeds so strongly that the film's power is only mitigated, and not undone, by a third act that fails as storytelling even though it's likely historically accurate.

The uniformly excellent cast is headed by Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup, a free black man in 1840s America. He makes his living as a fiddle player, while his wife is a teacher. However, he is soon shanghaied by a pair of nefarious white men and finds himself on a ship headed to New Orleans; he is informed that he will now be called Platt, and is sold into slavery by an unscrupulous businessman (Paul Giamatti, more frightening than you ever expected he could be).

As he toils away for the kindhearted but conflicted plantation owner Mr. Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), who recognizes that Solomon is both educated and an artist, he butts heads with Ford's underlings, especially the casually cruel Tibeats (Paul Dano). After they have a violent altercation, Ford fears for his slave's life and sells him to Mr. Epps (Michael Fassbender), an alcoholic sadist who owns a cotton plantation.

Though Epps reads the Bible to his property (as he frequently calls his slaves), he himself is not immune to the sins of the flesh. He has taken the young Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) -- his best cotton picker -- as his lover, and this doesn't sit well at all with his severe wife (Sarah Paulson), whose jealousy and hatred for blacks fuel her many degrading punishments toward her husband's paramour. Meanwhile, Solomon bides his time, attempts to preserve a modicum of self-respect, and waits for the chance to reclaim his rightful name and his family.

From a sheer storytelling standpoint, 12 Years a Slave pulls off something nearly impossible. Screenwriter John Ridley was given a lead character who has no control over his own life -- unable to flee or fight back in any meaningful way, Solomon does little more than suffer and try to persevere. That kind of character is the death of drama, but Ridley has plotted the movie ingeniously so that each scene follows logically from the actions of the previous one. This is not a random collection of horrific incidents that happened to one man; it's a harrowing explanation of exactly how and why these atrocities occurred.

McQueen's grand ambitions are revealed in his overall theme, which is to show how Solomon is far from the only victim of this inhumane institution. He efficiently and effectively details how every single person who comes in contact with slavery is corrupted by its vileness. What the slaveholders do to maintain their power alters them for the worse in very real ways -- that shines through in the characters of Epps and Ford. Additionally, the victims of slavery do terrible things to survive that will leave them scarred forever.

That point is driven home in the movie's best-written scene: a conversation between Solomon, Patsey, and Mistress Shaw (Alfre Woodard), an older black woman who enjoys formal afternoon tea and has servants who wait on her, all because the master of the house practically treats her as a wife. Shaw delivers a monologue full of anger and self-defensive justification for her own actions, but never drops the veil of civility. It's a showstopping scene that doesn't stand out by being better than the rest of the film, but because it's the most artistically powerful evocation of McQueen's overarching point.

The other aspect that helps elevate 12 Years a Slave is that, while tackling such an important topic, it never feels self-important. The director doesn't think he's teaching you anything you don't know, and he feels no need to pass judgment or to reassure you that all of this is awful because he trusts that you're already well aware. There isn't any condescension in the movie -- just a desire to tell this one story, and in so doing expose how such a malevolent system eroded everyone who was a part of it. By presenting that theme with such purpose and clarity, McQueen allows his viewers to consider how the echoes of that time reverberate to the modern day.

Also, while the film doesn't flinch from the disturbing violence that was commonplace in that era, it never wallows in the degradation. We are witness to nightmarish brutality, but it's presented in a way that makes it clear that McQueen trusts you are already horrified and don't need to have your buttons pressed.

The only thing undercutting the movie is a third act that is a total dramatic cheat. The climactic confrontation between Epps, his wife, Patsey, and Solomon feels redundant by the time it finally occurs. The choices Solomon makes in that scene should destroy us emotionally, but McQueen has so assuredly expressed his point-of-view that there's an inevitability to this conflict, no matter how well-acted and artfully staged it is. Additionally, the story's deus ex machina resolution adds to the sense that the movie runs just a little too long, even if it's never dull.

Like Spielberg's Schindler's List or Polanski's The Pianist, 12 Years a Slave is admirable, important, and serious filmmaking that is antithetical to what most people think of as entertainment. While it might not be perfect, it demands and deserves your attention.

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Watch Online In the Heart of the Sea (2015) - MovieTimeUs

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In 1850 Nantucket, young novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) arrives at a dockside boardinghouse late one night, when all of the boarders have gone to bed and only the proprietress (Michelle Fairley) and her husband Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) are still awake. The husband is spending the wee hours as he usually does: drinking himself into a cloud of whiskey and gently jiggering upright the masts of the model ships in the many bottles around him. Melville has come to hear his story, which he thinks would be beneficial for the research he's doing for a novel: a whaling saga, set on a ship, about how the search for the unattainable can ruin a man's life. He's willing to pay for an interview, but money alone won't pry open this man's box of memories. He's a survivor of the wreck of the Essex, a legendary whaling ship that met its match under shady circumstances, even though its first mate, Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), was one of the finest sailors who ever lived. He hedges. Melville persists. And so, with some encouragement from his wife (and a fresh bottle), he spills his unforgettable tale.

In the Heart of the Sea, based on Nathaniel Philbrick's nonfiction novel about the sea voyage that inspired Moby Dick, boasts an impressive cast of cult-favorite actors from former and current British territories -- Chris Hemsworth, Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, Frank Dilane -- who, with their various accents, form a believable ensemble hailing from what was, after all, New England. Studio head Jack L. Warner once famously complained, after his company produced a string of historical films that were box-office duds, "Don't make me any more movies where people write with feathers." That stuffy formality is the downfall of the many period dramas so eager to get the details right that the thrust of the story is forgotten, but In the Heart of the Sea sidesteps that danger mostly through the combined skill of its cast. Only the ship's highborn captain (played by Benjamin Walker) behaves like a stuffed shirt, and rightly so: He is the only character who is conscious of performing a destiny, as if he's already posing for the ancestral portrait that will someday grace his well-to-do family's estate. Everyone else is just a working stiff trying to get through the day with the tools he has. For Chase, it's an arsenal of harpoons to cut down the whales, and for Melville, it's a frantically scribbling pen, the only thing he has to ward off the ego-squelching presence of literary contemporaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne. This world is rich with artifacts, from crystal wine cruets to whale-oil lamps to a key-cranked marine chronometer, but their matter-of-fact handling by the actors keeps the focus on the story.

Regrettably, the one directorial decision that disturbs the movie's immersive, you-are-there quality is the unwanted and interrupting presence of extreme close-ups that look as if they're from security cameras affixed to strange locations -- looking straight down the rail of the ship, for example, or in a Nantucket gutter so we get a worm's eye view of a corn cob being slobbered on by a stray dog. Is this an attempt to graft the visual language of reality TV and surveillance footage onto a historical epic, in order to convince us of its authenticity? If so, it doesn't work, and it somewhat undermines the topsy-turvy sensation of the shots that give us a sense of the hazards of whaling, getting up close and personal with a behemoth mammal in the frothing surf. (There's also a disorienting casting choice: Chris Hemsworth bears a strong resemblance to Brendan Gleeson, which might make audiences think that the story is told from Chase's perspective, not that of the younger shipmate Nickerson later turns out to be.)

But these are small quibbles considering that In the Heart of the Sea is a thrilling survival saga that will get your blood pumping. Director Ron Howard has created a maritime redux of his other explorers' epic, Apollo 13; both of the films are about men at the mercy of technologies that help them traverse dangerous places (outer space, the open sea) but also make them more vulnerable, and both focus on the deep reserves of courage those men discover while trying to survive a no-man's-land. Indeed, this movie features two different journeys into a heart of darkness running in parallel: one aboard the Essex, and the other between Melville and Nickerson as they slowly reveal their demons to each other over the course of that long, witching-hour conversation. In the Heart of the Sea is more than just a diverting footnote to the legacy of Moby Dick -- it's an illuminating look at the sacrifices of brave men in ages past, a seafaring adventure, a survival yarn, and a meditation on courageous journeys both public and private. 

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