Released earlier this year to controversy and polarized critical reaction, Hunger tells the true and harrowing story of Bobby Sands, a jailed IRA member who participated in a notorious hunger strike along with other IRA prisoners. The director is the curiously named Steve McQueen, making his feature debut after years as a video and installation artist. As you might expect from this pedigree, the film has a certain deliberate and detached style, but that’s balanced out with emotional heft and a stunning performance from Michael Fassbender as Sands. (Fassbender was also recently notable in Inglourious Basterds, as a heroic film critic no less, and I could have done with a lot more of him and a lot less Brad Pitt, but I digress). Though extremely hard to watch at times (not surprising for a film spotlighting the fun-filled combo of prison and starvation), it’s highly original and singularly powerful, not to mention chilling in light of certain contemporary geopolitical parallels.

On a lighter (if not exactly sunny) note, a release this week that might well have flown under your theatrical radar is O’Horten. Norwegian writer-director Bent Hamer (best known here for the Bukowski adaptation Factotum) brings us the touching tale of a train engineer (Baard Owe) facing retirement and mortality on a winter’s journey that unfolds with the uneasy ambience of a dream. Made in a typically restrained and minimal Scandanavian style, with understated flourishes of gentle surrealism, it’s short on plot but long on atmosphere, bittersweet emotion, memorable characters and the kind of Nordic melancholy that’s about to get all too familiar.

And on another tip entirely, the third season of 30 Rock has just hit stores. After the second season truncated by the writers’ strike, this one has meat on the bone with Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracey Morgan and the gang back in fine form, making with the witty banter and barrage of one-liners that bring sunshine to our chilly, shrinking days.