12 Years A Slave is showing in the , and goes on general release on January 24Fassbender's portrait of this rotten plantation owner whose cotton is attacked by pests in what he's convinced is God's doing is one of his most chilling creations, because there's no inveterate malice in the man, just a reckless, proprietorial indifference which has clawed away his moral sanity. He represents ownership in its most hellbent form. The situation of Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o), his most adept cotton-picker, lures her to the calm brink of suicide: he's sexually obsessed with her, to a degree that makes his wife (a truly malicious Sarah Paulson) want her scratched out, expelled.