12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

8.5/10
When the credits rolled, I found myself thinking that this is was more a great story than a great movie...even though it was a great movie. Does that make any sense? What I mean is that it didn't fall into many of the trappings of conventional cinema, and instead just focused purely on storytelling, and did that job extremely well - which made it a great movie too. But I have to say I was expecting a little more, given the effusive, borderline ecstatic praise the movie has been met with. I wasn't moved to tears and didn't have my belief system shaken to its core or anything that I associate with a really monumental film, as much as I enjoyed it. Maybe it's unfair to press those expectations on a movie just because of the hype it's gotten, but it's inevitable.
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender were as good as advertised, as was everyone else (I was surprised watching the movie at how many "name" actors showed up). The music was actually an unexpected pleasure, a little unconventional but it worked really well.
The movie did give me a lot to think about, however. I mean, we tend to see slavery as a cut-and-dry "white owners, black slaves" situation, especially since that's its conventional portrayal in pop culture (and that was the predominant "arrangement", of course), but the movie did open my eyes more to the complexities of slavery - the different "levels" of freedom, ownership, and so on. And not only how blacks perceive whites and vice versa, but how blacks perceive blacks, which was interesting and important and not something I've ever really considered before.
Overall it's a very impressive work by Steve McQueen, light years ahead of the dreck that was Shame but still just a notch below Hunger in my book.

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

5/10
Last weekend I rewatched Steve McQueen's Hunger, primarily because a friend wanted to see it but also to revisit it before seeing his second film, Shame. Hunger blew me away all over again; unfortunately, Shame is a pretty big disappointment in comparison. Thank god for Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, who do fantastic work even though they're given some awfully hammy dialogue to chew on. Shame is about a sex addict (Fassbender) whose life starts to come unglued when his younger sister (Mulligan) drops in unexpectedly. What's most vexing about Shame is that for all the edginess inherent in the subject matter, and the director and the actors, it's remarkably boring. It plods along with no apparent direction and then seems to throw all kinds of stuff at the viewer, most of which is unexciting or woefully predictable. One of my most anticipated releases of the year, but it was a dud for me.

Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008)

9.5/10
Wow, this movie bowled me over. Sensational on every level, it's also deeply harrowing and almost impossible to watch without a perpetual grimace on one's face. Michael Fassbender's physical transformation is one of the most grotesque and honest performances put to screen in a long time. About the only thing you can fault the movie before is first-timer Steve McQueen's heavy-handed direction, with its endless long takes certain to earn criticism for being too "pretentious" or "arty for art's sake"...but I wasn't too bothered. And I had to admire him for it, not many directors in their debut films would have the balls to try some of the shots McQueen pulls off. Remarkable.