Shame (2011) or, That Empty Sex

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1 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Supporting Actress: Carrey Mulligan (lost to Agnieszka Grochowska for In Darkness)

A neat poster for Steve McQueen's Shame

QUICK REVIEW:

In Shame we follow a man living in New York, who is obsessed with sex. His sister shows up and lives at his place for a period, very much against his will, while she has an affair with his boss.

Shame is an intense film with long, uninterrupted takes, co-written by Abi Morgan (The Invisible Woman (2013)) and British director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave (2013)). Due to the sexual tensions in the sex addiction-themed story, it has an attraction that McQueen's only previous feature, the dismal Hunger (2008) didn't have.
It is well-acted by especially a luminous Carey Mulligan (An Education (2009)), who gives what must be the saddest rendition of New York, New York ever put to film in one scene, and James Badge Dale (The Departed (2006)). Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)) plays the self-destructive, unsympathetic lead, a character who, however, never attains much interest on my part.
The film's title, - Shame - doesn't seem to have any great relevance to what we see in the film. - Who feels shame? (No-one.) The lack of any back stories for the two main characters, besides an implication that they might both have ben subjected to sexual abuse as kids, also adds to the vibe that the film creates, which is that people with big sexual appetites are simply miserable. Film critic Donald Clarke of The Irish Times has, very incisively and apropos, called Shame's Puritanism "more than a little oppressive." It sure is. While the film is well-made and uncompromisingly downbeat, I also continue to find its style a bit auteur-pompous, and it will likely never become a favorite with me.

Related posts:

Steve McQueen: 12 Years a Slave (2013) - The inhumanity of slavery portrayed forcefully in awesome film
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]  

Carey Mulligan is amazing in Steve McQueen's Shame

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 4.2 mil. £
Box office: 11.1 mil. £
= Box office success
[Shame got an NC-17 rating in the US, which was accepted, even welcomed (perhaps mostly as a challenge) by its distributor there, Fox Searchlight Pictures, who paid 400k $ for the distribution rights. It made 4 mil. $ (36 % of the total gross) in the US. The film won many awards and nominations and made it onto many top 10 lists of the year, including the #2 spot on Roger Ebert's.]

What do you think of Shame?

The Iron Lady (2011) - Meryl Streep's global triumph as Lady Thatcher

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2 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Actress: Meryl Streep (lost to Bérénice Bejo for The Artist)
Best Make-up and Hair: Mark Coulier (lost to J. Edgar)

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, conjoined with London's buildings of government on the poster for Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady

QUICK REVIEW:

Margaret Thatcher, a merchant's daughter, stand behind the counter during World War II and grows up to develop great political flair and ambitions, which are fulfilled when she becomes the first female prime minister of Great Britain. Her life gets rolled out in Iron Lady from the vantage point of Thatcher the overprotected senior citizen and widow, who suffers from burgeoning dementia.

Meryl Streep (The Hours (2002)) is - once again - outstanding in this complete change of character here as England's Iron Lady, which won her her third Oscar. Jim Broadbent (Pattington (2014)) is amusing as her husband, and the two of them make this original entry point to her life rather moving.
Iron Lady is written by Abi Morgan (Shame (2011)) and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia! (2008)). It accomplishes depicting a lot of England's development during Thatcher's reign. However, it almost appears in the film to have been one long period of violent uprisings, which wasn't altogether the case. - And where was Reagan, the American president that Thatcher stood politically shoulder by shoulder with for years?
Still, The Iron Lady is a solid job made of an extremely difficult task, to make a broad-appealing biopic about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. It also features impressive, Oscar-winning make-up by Mark Coulier (The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) and J. Roy Helland (Doubt (2008)). It is an almost great film.

Related post:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 8.2 mil. £
Box office: 114.9 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Though many people still resent Thatcher so much that they won't go near a film about her, and many others were angry at Iron Lady for not glorifying its subject more than it does, the film was seen by many in a wide range of countries; lead by the US (30 mil. $/26 %), the UK (15.3 mil. $/13 %), Australia (10.6 mil. $/9 %), Japan (10.3 mil. $/9 %) and followed by many other countries.]

What do you think of The Iron Lady?