Steve McQueen‘s first two films both star Michael Fassbender, feature virtually interchangeable titles, and are nearly as grueling to watch as they must have been to make. But where Shame might be almost as excruciating as 2008’s Hunger, it’s a lot less exalted.

In Hunger, Fassbender’s imprisoned Irish revolutionary Bobby Sands starved himself to death; in Shame, Fassbender’s thirtysomething Manhattan office drone mortifies his flesh in another fashion… Read more.