The Weekly MUBI Digest | 25th November
David Farnor | On 25, Nov 2017
MUBI continues its knack for showcasing a diverse range of small and big talent from around the world this week, with the directorial debut of Beach Rats’ Eliza Hittman. And, at the same time, the site has brought back Miguel Gomes’ epic Arabian Nights trilogy (read our interview with the director here), hot on the heels of the online premiere of this year’s top Berlinale prize winner, On Body and Soul.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
It Felt Like Love
With Beach Rats now in cinemas and on VOD, MUBI takes us back to director Eliza Hittman’s debut, It Felt Like Love. 14-year-old Lila is experiencing an ennui-filled Brooklyn summer playing third wheel to Chiara, her more experienced friend, and Chiara’s boyfriend, Patrick. Determined to have a love interest of her own, a bravado-filled Lila pursues Sammy and manipulates herself deeper into his world.
LA Confidential
Curtis Hanson’s masterful neo-noir brings period Los Angeles to stylish, gripping life, with Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe on fine form as a pair of cops drawn together by murder, a mysterious woman and the city’s seedy underbelly.
Yumeji
Yumeji follows real-life painter-poet Yumeji Takehisa, who strays from his lover when he falls for the beautiful and newly windowed Tomoyo.
Fatal Assistance
Filmed over two years, Haitian-born Raoul Peck’s powerful exposé examines the staggering failures, global and local, that have stranded a vulnerable nation in the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.
Murder in Pacot
In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, a middle-aged Port-au-Prince couple come face to face with the stark contradictions of Haitian society when they are forced to rent out their villa to a foreign aid worker and his enterprising local girlfriend.
Other new releases on MUBI
NWR: The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds
An undercover agent is sent to infiltrate bootleggers in the Florida Everglades, but winds up lost in the swamps and stuck in a decrepit hotel with a few of peculiar inhabitants. Bert Williams’ 1965 flick starts off as a police actioner, but quickly morphs into an unholy fairy tale of Southern Gothic melodrama and horror. Read our full review.
NWR: Hot Thrills and Warm Chills
Rita Alexander stars as the towering gang leader of a trio of hoodlum gals looking to make one last big score, run away with a mess of diamonds and live the dream in paradise. Dale Berry’s eccentric 1967 gem from Texas wildcard director Dale Berry, underscored by a relentlessly brilliant Perez Prado soundtrack. Read our full review.
Natural Born Killers
Oliver Stone’s controversial comedy, which follows two mass murderers (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), remains as black as ever.
Bill Viola: The Road to St Paul’s
Gerald Fox’s film documents Bill Viola and his wife and close collaborator Kira Perov’s odyssey to create two permanent video installations for London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Martyrs and Mary, the first art commissions of their kind to be installed in Britain’s most famous religious space.
A Hard Day’s Night
It’s 1964 and four young lads from Liverpool are about to change the world. John, Paul, George, and Ringo play cheeky comic versions of themselves in a film that captured the astonishing moment when they officially became the singular, irreverent idols of their generation and changed music forever.
Heat-Haze Theater (Kagero-Za)
Matsuzaki is a playwright in 1926 Tokyo supported by a wealthy patron. One evening, Matsuzaki crosses paths with a beautiful and mysterious woman, leading to an odyssey of infidelity and obsession…
Knock on Any Door
Andrew Morton is an attorney who made it out of the slums. Nick Romano is his client, a young man with a long string of crimes behind him. After he lost his paycheck gambling, hoping to buy his wife some jewelry, she announced she was pregnant. Later he finds her dead from suicide.
Bitter Victory
In Nicholas Ray’s WWII drama, a British officers, Captain Leith and Major Brand, a South African, lead a daring raid to steal crucial documents from a Nazi stronghold in Libya. However, the two don’t seem particularly fond of each other.
Wet Woman in the Wind
One afternoon, Shiori, a very sexually active young woman working in a café, is riding her bicycle and cuts off Kosuke, who is pulling a two-wheeled cart. Once a recognized playwright, Kosuke now lives a quiet life in a mountain hut, far away from the city, in the hope of escaping his past.
Heat
Robert De Niro. Al Pacino. Michael Mann. Three icons of cinemas combine for his seminal crime drama, which sees a determine cop and an equally ruthless criminal in a cat-and-mouse game in a nocturnal Los Angeles caught with cool intensity by Mann’s deep-focused camera. A modern classic.
The Fountain
A doctor’s endless search for a cure to his wife’s cancer spans centuries in Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious, divisive sci-fi, as she writes the tale of a 16th Century conquistador looking for eternal life.
Zigeunerweisen
Winner of multiple Japanese Academy Awards, Zigeunerweisen tells of two intellectuals and former colleagues from military academy who involve their wives in a series of dangerous sexual games.
Arabian Nights Vol. I
In Portugal, over 600 shipyard workers are being laid off. An apiarist fights off an invasion of foreign bees. An African wizard creates an aerosol spray that cures impotence in world leaders and IMF financiers. A judge puts a cockerel on trial for crowing too early. (Read our interview with Miguel Gomes.)
Arabian Nights Vol. II
An elderly criminal becomes a folk hero as he successfully evades hordes of police; a stern judge oversees a case involving 13 stolen cows, mail-order brides, a genie and a machete-wielding human lie detector; a Maltese poodle shuffles between households in a recession-stricken estate. (Read our interview with Miguel Gomes.)
Arabian Nights Vol. III
Scheherazade, the daughter of the grand vizier, weaves tales to please the king and stay her own execution. Realising she will soon run out of stories to tell, she hatches a plan to escape the palace. Meanwhile, finch hunters offer a musical analogy for Portugal’s 21st-century woes. (Read our interview with Miguel Gomes.)
On Body and Soul
When a man and woman who meet at work begin to know each other, they discover that they have the same dreams at night, and they decide to make them come true. Subtly moving and brutally raw, read our full review of Ildikó Enyedi’s first feature since the 90s.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
A German Youth
Available until end of: 25th November
The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds
Available until end of: 26th November
A German Youth
Available until end of: 27th November
The Driller Killer
Available until end of: 28th November
Experiment in Terror
Available until end of: 29th November
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Available until end of: 30th November
Hot Thrills and Warm Chills
Available until end of: 1st December
Bobbi Jene
Available until end of: 2nd December