NYFF51 Review: 12 Years a Slave (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

What makes 12 Years a Slave so incisive isn't that it is a particularly apt depiction of slavery. It's that director Steve McQueen makes the viewer feel like it is. In his previous film Shame, McQueen got us to identify with a lascivious sex addict. In 12 Years, his third film (and his third entry in the New York Film Festival), McQueen does something quite ingenious by choosing to follow the true story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor). In electing to tell of the ordeal of an educated, free African American from the North, kidnapped and sold into slavery, he makes Northup's fear and outrage our own.

Movie Review: Prisoners (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Few of us who have children could imagine how we would react if they had been kidnapped. Would we crumble under the emotional pressure, or would we keep enough of our wits about us to try to somehow deal with the situation? Denis Villeneuve's harrowing Prisoners presents us with a spectrum of parental reactions, ranging from that of an utterly broken mom spending most of her time weeping in bed to that of a bitter father charging through crime scenes at suspects who might not even have much to do with the disappearance at all.