New releases and coming soon to MUBI UK (20th May 2017)
David Farnor | On 20, May 2017
MUBI heads to Cannes this month, with a fortnight-long takeover celebrating the creme de la Croisette. Centred around its exclusively-acquired Un Certain Regard winner The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki (read our interview with star Jarkko Lahti here), every day brings another old favourite from festival years past.
Here’s what’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription streaming service. This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
Tip Top – 20th May
Bright interior, dark outside. Two women, struggling against external hostility and internal demons. Playing with the mood of Alfred Hitchcock’s Trouble With Harry, Serge Bozon invites us in an exhilarating and recreational English crime comedy style.
The Taste of Money – 21st May
Desire, sex and murder in a conglomerate-owning family. Newly-hired gofer Young-Jak Joo becomes a key pawn in a powerful South Korean corporate-crime family obsessed with sex, money, and intrigue.
Eyes Wide Open – 23rd May
A gay love story in the heart of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem. The enormous pressure created by the community around the men triggers an irreversible act.
Salvo – 24th May
With their new film opening the Semaine de la Critique, Grassadonia and Piazza’s Salvo comes to MUBI. A hitman for the Sicilian Mafia, Salvo is solitary and ruthless. When he sneaks into a house to eliminate a man, he discovers Rita, a young blind girl who powerlessly stands by while her brother is assassinated. Salvo tries to close those disturbing eyes, when something impossible happens…
After The Battle – 25th May
Once a member of the notorious groups that were coerced by the Egyptian government to attack the protestors in Tahir Square in 2011, Mahmoud has since lost his job and been ostracized by his own community. A chance encounter with a secular young divorcee will change both of their lives forever.
Time of the Gypsies – 26th May
In this luminous tale set in the area around Sarajevo and in Italy, Perhan, an engaging young Romani (gypsy) with telekinetic powers, is seduced by the quick-cash world of petty crime, which threatens to destroy him and those he loves.
Sex,Lies, and Videotapes – 27th May
A multiple prize winner at both Cannes and Sundance, Steven Soderbergh’s feature debut concerns a man who films women discussing their sexuality on camera and his relationship with two very different sisters who are both sleeping with the same man.
Other new releases on MUBI
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki is a portrait of real life Finnish boxer Olli Maki, which won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes 2016. That should give you a hint that this isn’t your usual boxing movie – and not just because it’s in Finnish and black-and-white. Jarkko Lahti is fantastic as the fighter, his face channeling both optimism and failure, while director Juho Kuosman shoots in monochrome 16mm, giving everything the feel of a newsreel. Laugh-out-loud funny and shot through with the romance of defeat, this is truly knock-out stuff. Read our full review.
Aliyah
Alex, a young drug dealer in Paris, is torn between making his aliyah (the term for Jews emigrating to Israel), his drug selling, his complicated love life and a destructive brother. He will have to find his own way and make a final decision.
Dear Diary
“Dear Diary, there is something I like to do more than anything else…” These lines open the author’s diary, the confidant of the most hidden thoughts. A diary in images, as free and light as only personal thoughts can be.
Rififi
After making such American noir classics as The Naked City and Brute Force, blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on a tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Lights. The result is a noir caper featuring one of the greatest heists you’ll ever see.
Hellboy
When the Nazis open a paranormal portal, an infant demon named Hellboy is the result. Raised by the Allies, he becomes the world’s unlikeliest – and reddest – superhero. Ron Perlman is perfectly cast as the demonic good guy, teaming up with Guillermo del Toro to make one of the best, and underrated, comic book movie double-bills.
Les Hautes Solitudes
MUBI’s Philippe Garrel retrospective continues with a silent black-and-white portrait of fallen 40-year-old star Jean Seberg, 15 years after Breathless, struggling with alcohol, fear, loneliness, chemical dependence and dementia.
The Professionals
Shot on location across the American Southwest and Mexico with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Jack Palance, Richard Brooks’ adventure is a 1960s epic a la The Dirty Dozen. Cannes poster mascot Claudia Cardinale is the icing on the cake.
John From
Rita has everything. 15 years and a whole summer ahead of her; a future ex-boyfriend and a best friend to braid her hair. But then, she visits an exhibition from a known neighbour, and her perfect world crumbles around her. Picked out as a Special Discovery by MUBI, this hidden gem establishes João Nicolau as one of Portugal’s leading modern filmmakers.
Century of Birthing
MUBI’s Lav Diaz retrospective continues with this drama bout an artist struggling to finish his work, while a storyline about a cult plays in his head: Fundamentalism will destroy the world. The artist’s muse is endangered by his process. Will he redeem her, in the end? In the words of MUBI: “Like some of the best 19th-century novelists, Lav Diaz is a genius at interweaving multiple stories to create a truly expanded canvas of characters, landscapes and social and political struggle.”
The Assassin
Marcello Mastroianni stars in Elio Petri’s first film, a wicked social satire from 1961. He plays crooked antique dealer Alfredo, whose apartment is broken into by the police. They then bring him to the station, where he is accused of the murder of Adalgisa de Matteis, an ex-mistress. During the long and painful interrogation, he remembers some obscure fragments of his past.
The 10th Victim
This next collaboration between director Elio Petri and silver screen icon Marcello Mastroianni is a retro-futurist sci-fi satire of social bloodlust, playfully twisting genre expectations long before Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, as Victim and Hunter run around Italy trying to score a kill in front of the movie crews they arranged so they could make commercials from the footage.
The Lady from Shanghai
MUBI marks Orson Welles’ birthday with his classic noir from 1947. It stars Rita Hayworth as a femme fatale who catches the eye of an Irish sailor. He soon finds himself implicated in a murder, despite his innocence. Based on the 1938 crime novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King, the film climaxes with one of the iconic moments in cinema history.
The Virgin’s Bed
The first feature-length film in MUBI’s Philippe Garrel retrospective is a cinematic conflagration and re-invention of Biblical storytelling for a culture and an audience having just passed through the convulsions of May ’68. The loose allegory stars model-artist-musician Zouzou as Mary Magdalene, French actor Pierre Clémenti as Jesus and the director himself as a misguided apostle.
Homo Sapiens
Following its nationwide screening at Picturehouse cinemas last month, MUBI teams up with the intriguing new programming collective Misc. Films to stream Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s documentary, which explores places that have been forgotten or abandoned by their builders, from Fukushima to Bulgaria. Expect stunning things.
A monthly subscription to MUBI costs £5.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial.
Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
Rouge
Available until end of: 20th May
Macbeth
Available until end of: 21st May
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Available until end of: 22nd May
You Can’t Take It with You
Available until end of: 23rd May
Solitary Fragments
Available until end of: 24th May
Bullet in the Head
Available until end of: 25th May
The Dream and the Silence
Available until end of: 26th May
Laurel Canyon
Available until end of: 27th May
Man at Bath
Available until end of: 28th May
Battle Royale
Available until end of: 29th May
Le Revelateur
Available until end of: 30th May