David Farnor | On 18, May 2019

MUBI jets to Cannes this week to continue its fortnight-long takeover that ranges Ken Loach to Ruben Ostlund, via Nicolas Winding Refn and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. This week, the latter take the spotlight, with Only God Forgives and the modern masterpiece Amores Perros.

There’s also still the chance to stream Madeline’s Madeline, after its release online and in cinemas last weekend – and catch up with director Josephine Decker’s career. And, for those looking for another big screen experience, you can use MUBI Go (which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers), to see coming-of-age gem Beats at participating theatres.

What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:

 

This week on MUBI

Cannes: Only God Forgives – 18th May

Ryan Goslin and Nicolas Winding Refn teamed up again after Drive to make Only God Forgives. If the former lightly tip-toed around the discotheque of darkness, then this is an all-out Danse Macabre. A gnarly and lubricious film that lambadas its way through an assortment of big themes like honour, masculinity and Oedipal rage. With karaoke.

Cannes: Wild Tales – 19th May

Damián Szifron’s wicked anthology of Argentine comedy shorts is dark, violent and hilarious.

Cannes: Norte, The End of History – 20th May

Transplanting Dostoyevsky’s epic “Crime and Punishment” to the director’s native Philippines, Norte may be the most accessible offering from director Lav Diaz, even shooting the whole picture in colour.

Cannes: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu – 21st May

A key film from the Romanian New Wave, this pitch-black and Kafkaesque contemporary comedy reveals the myriad nuances involved in the quest for human care.

Cannes: We Need to Talk About Kevin – 22nd May

Nine agonizing years after Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay returned to Cannes with another literary adaptation. Radically reimagining the nature-or-nurture novel, Ramsay—and star Tilda Swinton—transform the text into a chilling film rightfully venerated for its unforgettable visual language.

Cannes: Mimosas – 23rd May

Entering genre territory and remarkably pushing its boundaries, this desert odyssey from Oliver Laxe is a spiritual western and a daring invitation to jump into the unknown.

Cannes: Amores Perros – 24th May

Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga’s thriller, which sees three characters connected in Mexico City by one fateful car crash, is brutal, powerful, visceral filmmaking.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Josephine Decker: Madeline’s Madeline

Madeline has become an active member of an experimental theatre troupe. When its ambitious director pushes Madeline to weave her rich interior world and her troubled relationship with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur.

Josephine Decker: Art History

Josephine Decker stars in Joe Swanberg’s filmic act of self-reflection. Sam likes Juliette, the lead actress in his sexually explicit film, but he must remain professional while directing her. When Juliette and her co-star Eric develop feelings for each other that they explore off-camera, Sam feels jealous, and his inner struggles threaten to derail the project.

Josephine Decker: Me the Terrible

With Madeline’s Madeline on the way to cinemas, MUBI begins a Josephine Decker retrospective with this wondrous, charmingly eccentric ode to imagination.

The Childhood of a Leader

Brady Corbet’s acting career was quietly developing with roles in the likes of Melancholia, Simon Killer, and Force Majeure, when he surprised us all with his directorial debut: this stunning and ambitious rumination on violence scored by Scott Walker.

A Most Violent Year

Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain are on superb form in JC Chandor’s gripping Shakespearean crime drama about a New York gangster trying to stick to his own moral compass.

Out of Sight

Not only one of Hollywood’s best crime films, Out of Sight is also one of its steamiest romances, courtesy of the flushed chemistry between a dashing George Clooney and a career-best Jennifer Lopez. Sexy, witty, and clever, this Elmore Leonard adaptation stands out as one of the 90”s best.

MUBI Shorts: Flores

The entire population of Azores is evicted due to an uncontrolled plague of hydrangeas, a common flower in these islands. Two young soldiers, bound to the beauty of the landscape, stay on the islands to guide us through the stories of those forced to leave and the inherent desire to resist.

MUBI Debuts: Closeness

1998, Nalchik, Russia. A crisis arises in a Jewish family when son David and his fiancée are kidnapped. Rebellious daughter Ilana is trying to fight her way out of the traditional family structure. While her parents cling to the Jewish community for help, she turns to her Kabardian boyfriend.

Cannes: Force Majeure

MUBI’s Cannes takeover kicks off with Ruben Ostlund’s superbly spiky comedy. It follows a Swedish family who travel to enjoy a few days of skiing. The slopes are spectacular but, during a lunch at a mountainside restaurant, an avalanche turns everything upside down. Tomas and Ebba’s marriage now hangs in the balance as Tomas struggles desperately to reclaim his role as family patriarch.

Cannes: The Angels’ Share

MUBI’s Cannes series continues with Ken Loach’s Jury Prize winner from 2012. Robbie is a Glasgow boy locked in a family feud who just wants a way out. On community service he meets Rhino, Albert and Mo. Little did Robbie imagine that turning to drink might change their lives, leading them to the distilleries of the Scottish Highlands and the biggest gamble of his life.

Cannes: Paranoid Park

Following Elephant and Last Days, Gus Van Sant returned to Cannes with this dreamlike tale of guilt and loneliness in suburbia. Shot by Christopher Doyle, the legendary DP best known for his work with Wong Kar-wai, Paranoid Park is a rare, haunting immersion into youth and its deluge of emotions.

Crooklyn

Spike Lee returns to the old Brooklyn stomping grounds of his adolescence with this dazzling film co-written with his two siblings. It follows the day-to-day joys and frustrations of Troy, a young girl living in 1970s Brooklyn with her four older brothers and her loving but complicated parents.

MUBI Rediscovered: Funeral Parade of Roses

MUBI’s new strand devoted to new restorations begins with iconoclastic Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto’s bold, transgressive and influential first feature. A rare and revelatory immersion into Japan’s 1960s queer and drag culture.

Match Point

Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are on steamy form in this Dostoevskian thriller about luck, fate and British society – watch out for a scene-stealing turn from Matthew Goode.

MUBI Undiscovered: The Wild Frontier

MUBI’s Undiscovered strand, spotlighting adventurous films that push boundaries, kicks off with this compassionate 2017 French documentary that tacks us inside the Calais Jungle, as it’s partially torn down, leaving expelled migrants to move to the Northern zone to find shelter and keep on living.

Cold in July

Michael C Hall stars as a man who shoots a low-life burglar in 1989 Texas. He’s hailed as a hero by the town, but his father is soon out for revenge… (Read our full review)

byNWR: Olga’s House of Shame

The notorious exploitation entry that jumpstarted an entire “roughie” genre of S&M-tinged exploitation films. Audrey Cambell plays Olga, a sadistic jewel-thieving madame who hides in an abandoned mine and exacts all kinds of misery upon those who defy her—all told in oddball semi-documentary style.

The Raft

Following its theatrical release, award-winning documentary The Raft docks at MUBI, which follows what happened in 1973, when 5 men and 6 women embarked on a raft as part of a scientific experiment studying violence, aggression and sexual attraction in human behaviour.

Straub + Huillet: Not Reconciled, or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules

50 years of German history in nearly 50 minutes, such is Straub-Huillet’s audacity. For such a scope, the duo reject conventional storytelling in favor of a more confrontative, daring cinema. Time and people are fragmented across eras in order to discover the past within the present—and vice versa.

Nervous Translation

Shireen Seno, who started as a photographer for Lav Diaz, confirms an eye for intimacy with her award-winning sophomore film. Nervous Translation enters the mind of a child to paint a portrait of the Philippines in the 80s that delicately captures the weight of history and the power of imagination.

Of Horses and Men

In a remote valley in Iceland, where neighbours follow each other closely and people have deeply intertwined relationships with their horses, a couple’s first official visit is keenly monitored. Spring is coming and, with it, the dangerous force of nature. This cannot end well.

 

A monthly subscription to MUBI costs £9.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial.

 

Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

Love Education
Available until end of: 18th May

The Road
Available until end of: 19th May

The Breakfast Club
Available until end of: 20th May

Pina
Available until end of: 21st May

That Obscure Object of Desire
Available until end of: 22nd May

Machorka-Muff
Available until end of: 23rd May

The Fire
Available until end of: 24th May

The Double Life of Veronique
Available until end of: 25th May

 

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