12 YEARS A SLAVE

It's impossible to imagine any viewer of director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave not haunted for hours, if not days or weeks, by its potent, frequently horrific imagery. Be it the protracted sight of protagonist Solomon Northrup hanging from a tree, his wiggling toes barely touching the dirt, or the early shot of Northrup caged in a Washington, D.C., prison with the camera slowly tilting upward to implicate Capitol Hill in his (and all slaves') ordeal, McQueen continually delivers wrenching visual representations to match this already-wrenching tale. Yet if pressed for the one image that I find lingering above all others in this magnificent, devastating film, it would simply be the face of Chiwetel Ejiofor, who, in one unbroken take near the finale, almost seems to encapsulate hundreds of years of injustice in one anguished stare.

LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER

While raving to him about Lee Daniels' The Butler - the glorious, heart-rending, hugely entertaining Civil Rights saga that may showcase the finest performance yet by star Forest Whitaker - a friend asked if it was the sort of movie that needed to be seen at the movies, or if it was something that could wait until home video. I replied that, as much as I think great films should always be seen first in as grandly scaled a format as possible, it was probably a work that wouldn't lose much in the transition from big to smaller screen. Although director Daniels' effort covers some 75 years of American history, with Whitaker portraying an eight-term White House servant over more than 50 of them, it's still a rather intimate epic boasting a mostly understated visual style, and will no doubt play just fine in home-theater settings. (Actually, after the film's "For Your Consideration" screeners are eventually sent out, I think it's going to play awfully fine in the home-theater settings of Oscar voters. My first thought on the drive home was that even though it's only August, this year's Best Picture, Director, and Actor races were already all sewn up.)

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

As someone who really and truly adores the X-Men movies - even the Brett Ratner one, which hardly anyone likes - I was prepared to accept any number of flaws and disappointments in X-Men Origins: Wolverine just for the chance to watch Hugh Jackman bear his adamantium claws and toss off a few pithy, sarcastic zingers. And for a while, Jackman's presence was enough.