Shame
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: December 2, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
10
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJan 20, 2012
The film is a raw, unsparing look at the downside of humanity. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliDec 1, 2011
Shame has a lolling pace and stunning visual clarity. Structurally, it's close to perfect - its precision echoed in the Glenn Gould piano recordings of Bach keyboard works that Brandon listens to obsessively. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertNov 30, 2011
This is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 8, 2011
It's first and foremost a visual and sonic symphony, and a Dante-esque journey through a New York nightworld where words are mostly useless or worse. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyNov 8, 2011
Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side, a scorching look at a case of sexual addiction that's as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs. Read full review
100
VarietyJustin ChangNov 8, 2011
A mesmerizing companion piece to his 2008 debut, "Hunger," this more approachable but equally uncompromising drama likewise fixes its gaze on the uses and abuses of the human body, as Michael Fassbender again strips himself down, in every way an actor can, for McQueen's rigorous but humane interrogation. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 1, 2011
It is Mulligan and most especially Fassbender that give the film its power. The desperation, hostility and despair he conveys through the act of sex make Shame a film that is difficult to watch but even harder to turn away from. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 15, 2011
Equally harrowing and heartrending, Shame is a film that feels akin to going into battle, and I for one didn't emerge unscathed. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 15, 2011
Shame is fearless in the way the most ambitious art often is, and to write it off for what it doesn't do is reductive and misguided. You don't just watch Shame: You feel it, too. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 29, 2011
It's neither glamorous nor erotic and director Steve McQueen has taken an unflinching and non-judgmental view of sexual addiction in Shame. Read full review
85
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 1, 2011
Mulligan is terrific here, and restrained in a way that suggests an actorly generosity unusual for someone so young: Her scenes with Fassbender don't so much say "Look at me" as "Look at him." Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasDec 1, 2011
McQueen is a showy director, but his bravura long takes have the effect of heightened attentiveness, allowing scenes to build in intensity without the relief of a cut. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon WiseJan 9, 2012
Brave, beautifully acted and emotionally revealing - an early strong contender for the most provocative and compelling film of the year. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 1, 2011
These characters are stripped bare in every sense, reflecting an extreme degree of inner confusion, vulnerability and fear. Betrayed and broken as children, they now have to define and rebuild themselves as adults...Sissy turns a nightclub rendition of "New York, New York" into a heartbreaking plea. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichNov 29, 2011
Fassbender and his multifaceted allure helps counteract any thematic or conceptual shakiness, as was the case in McQueen's highly uneven debut, "Hunger." One thing's for sure: McQueen has found his De Niro, and he better keep him close. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn LevyDec 15, 2011
Resembles an amusement park ride -- a visit to a house of horrors that ends, more or less, where it begins. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyDec 8, 2011
McQueen finds the exquisite tension between the brother wanting to disconnect and the sister longing for connection. To paraphrase a line of Sissy's, it's a good movie that comes from a bad place. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickDec 2, 2011
A little humor would have helped leaven a movie that is frankly often very difficult to watch. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenDec 1, 2011
This is an affecting picture that leaves the viewer as wrung out as the protagonist. No doubt you'll be seduced but, in the end, you may also feel abandoned. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 1, 2011
Fans of Fassbender's yummy performances in this year's "Jane Eyre" and "X-Men: First Class" should be forewarned that, although we see the handsome Irish actor in the altogether, Shame is strangely un-sexy. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 1, 2011
Fassbender's portrayal is truly haunting, and when he sobs, dramatically unraveling, it's clear he's imprisoned by his physical urges. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 1, 2011
Michael Fassbender delivers a bold and brilliantly immersive performance as a sex addict in Shame. He is so raw and riveting you won't be able to take your eyes off him. Read full review
75
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreNov 29, 2011
Rarely has a movie been so sexual without being remotely sexy. Rarely has a guy who might be admired in a sex comedy as a "playa" seemed more pathetic with each fresh conquest. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 27, 2011
McQueen films his characters like specimens in a jar, but the stakes are so high that the actors deliver. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 15, 2011
There is nothing erotic about it, nothing sexy, nothing but a brutish satisfying of carnal desires. Without an astounding performance from Michael Fassbender, it would be almost too painful to watch (and at times, too boring). With him, it's not exactly easy. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 1, 2011
Much of the film is banal or pretentious, or both - vacuous vignettes about emptiness. Occasionally, though, those vignettes burst into life and burn with consuming fire. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissDec 1, 2011
In a movie era remarkable for its reluctance to dramatize erotic intimacy, Shame merits praise for the dark energy of its sexual encounters. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottFeb 3, 2012
It's easy to be interested in the characters' lives -- as tragic as they are -- but it's not nearly as easy to become emotionally invested in them. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 1, 2011
There is a good movie to be made about someone like Brandon, especially with someone like Fassbender, a performer of exceptional technical facility and a fascinating sense of reserve. McQueen's isn't quite it. Read full review
60
NPRMark JenkinsDec 2, 2011
It was frantic sex that earned Shame an NC-17 rating, but this arty drama is mostly slow and methodical. And thoroughly unsexy. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 1, 2011
How can visual pleasure communicate existential misery? It is a real and interesting challenge, and if Shame falls short of meeting it, the seriousness of its effort is hard to deny. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondNov 30, 2011
Overall it's a game effort but despite its strong ambitions and provocative themes, Shame may leave you just like its main protagonist - in need of a very cold shower. Read full review
50
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallFeb 15, 2012
Shame smears the lines between daring and taunting, and art versus indulgence. When it ends there's the urge to take a shower, and not a cold one. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 8, 2011
There's a misery in Fassbender that's spellbinding. I rolled my eyes for most of Shame. But never at him. That face tells the story of addiction: the joylessness of sex. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensDec 1, 2011
Michael Fassbender's portrayal of Brandon, the rootless Manhattan sex addict in Steve McQueen's Shame, may lay claim to this year's title of most outstanding performance in a mediocre movie. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumNov 30, 2011
The biggest surprise in Shame is how distanced, passionless, and merely skin-deep the director's attention is - how little he cares about the subject of his own movie. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedNov 30, 2011
Director McQueen shares no primal truths, offers no resolutions, and the movie seems pointless. It seems almost wicked to spread on all that enticement and titillation, and then throw the sandwich away. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. HobermanNov 29, 2011
Another creature of need, if the temperamental opposite of self-contained Brandon, Sissy is equally prepared to push her way into his life or push herself in front of a subway. She's also a performer - and Mulligan's blowsy desperation makes for the movie's best turn. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 28, 2011
Fassbender, who was, frankly, much sexier and more devilish in "X-Men: First Class," is required to spend much of his time staring with blank intensity into the middle distance. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezNov 9, 2011
Shame articulates a shallow, even mundane, understanding of an uninteresting man's sex addiction-in a vibrant city rendered dull and anonymous. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderBen SachsDec 1, 2011
Most of the film feels recycled from sexually explicit art movies dating back at least to "Last Tango in Paris" (1972) and continuing with movies like Patrice Chéreau's "Intimacy" (2001) or Götz Spielmann's "Antares" (2004). With nothing new in its characters, settings, or themes, Shame has little to offer except McQueen's style, which does little to elucidate anything around it. Read full review
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