The Weekly MUBI Digest | 8th December 2018
David Farnor | On 08, Dec 2018
MUBI continues to pay tribute to the late Nicolas Roeg this week, with the release of The Man Who Fell to Earth. And, with The Image Book now available to stream exclusively online, MUBI is also going back to Jean-Luc Godard’s roots with his classic Breathless. And, speaking of cinema icons, MUBI Go (which offers a cinema ticket every week to its subscribers) is giving you the chance to Robert Redford in David Lowery’s The Old Man and the Gun for free at participating cinemas.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
Nic Roeg: The Man Who Fell to Earth – 8th December
MUBI’s Nicolas Roeg tribute continues with this iconic cult sci-fi starring David Bowie as an alien who lands on Earth to source out water for his dying planet. He starts a highly advanced and profitable tech company in order to build a spacecraft to transport the water, but his plans are threatened when the government intercepts…
MUBI Go: The Old Man and the Gun – In Cinemas Now
After the transcendent beauty of A Ghost Story, David Lowery slows down for this slight but splendid caper. The old man in question is Forrest Tucker, a bank robber who has lost none of his charm, cockiness or criminal drive, even in his later years. Robert Redford is perfectly cast as the suave thief, strolling into banks with a seasoned twinkle, old-school manners and a grandad-like smile – before whipping out a pistol and asking them (politely) to give him all their cash. He doesn’t fire the thing; after all, who would say no to Robert Redford?
His three-man crew earns the nickname The Over-the-Hill Gang and he embraces the chance to get one last stab at notoriety, one more cat-and-mouse chase with a detective (in this case Casey Affleck’s determined John Hunt). But the real fun comes when Redford shares the screen with Sissy Spacek as Jewel, a horse-riding widow who clicks with the similarly lonely old-timer. Lowery shoots their romance, and the heists (and prison breaks) that punctuate it, on a lovingly fuzzy 16mm, wrapping this low-key thriller nostalgia to match its leads’ golden Hollywood charisma. For all involved, it feels like an easy ride down a road well travelled; hop in, let the top down and enjoy the breeze gently float by.
Other new releases on MUBI
Godard: The Image Book
After screening in cinemas on Sunday 2nd December, MUBI exclusively releases The Image Book online. Jean-Luc Godard returns with a bracing, beautiful and confrontational essay film. Splicing together classic film clips and newsreel footage, often stretched, saturated and distorted almost beyond recognition, The Image Book interrogates our relationship with film, culture and global politics. Read our full review
Godard: Breathless
Before The Image Book arrives, go back to Godard’s most iconic work, which follows petty thug Michel, who panics and impulsively kills a policeman while driving a stolen car. On the lam, he turns to his aspiring journalist girlfriend Patricia, hiding out in her Paris apartment. When Patricia learns that Michel is being investigated for murder, she begins to question her loyalties.
Lina Rodriguez: Senoritas
Colombia-born, Canada-based Lina Rodriguez elegantly questions the role of young women in a patriarchal society with her first two features. Having been compared to Lena Dunham’s Girls, Señoritas beautifully captures the minutiae of adolescence.
Lina Rodriguez: This Time Tomorrow
With a story strikingly split in two, Lina Rodriguez’s This Time Tomorrow is a compelling study on family and loss, surfacing the clash between everyday life and transformative change. As with her debut, the film offers a window into the urban middle classes rarely portrayed in Colombian cinema.
Nic Roeg: Walkabout
MUBI pays tribute to Nicolas Roeg with one of his most iconic triumphs: right from its dreamy opening and its irrationally terrifying plunge, Walkabout is a hallucinatory, mysterious, timeless masterpiece.
A Star Is Born
Before Bradley Cooper’s awards contender came several other versions of the star-crossed Hollywood romance. William Wellman’s vision of the timeless story and its tangling of romance and art, shot in early Technicolor, is a classic melodrama and a telling watch compared to Cooper’s modern take.
Patience (After Sebald)
MUBI marks the 20th anniversary of Patience, based on The Rings of Saturn by German writer W.G. Sebald. Grierson Award-winning director Grant Gee (Joy Division) ventures to East Anglia to craft this film about landscape, art, history, life and loss, featuring contributions from Tacita Dean, Iain Sinclair and other major artists.
In the Shadow of Women
Shot on monochrome 35mm, the second instalment in Garrel’s Trilogy of Love is a light romantic drama of marriage and doubled infidelity, starring Stanislas Merhar and Clotilde Coureau.
Cronenberg Double: Cosmopolis
Robert Pattinson continues his interesting series of choices post-Twilight with this turn in Cronenberg’s odyssey, which sees a young billionaire riding across Manhattan in a limo to get a haircut. Over the course of his journey, intimate encounters, grid-locked traffic and the death of a rap star contribute to his reality melting away.
Cronenberg Double: Maps to the Stars
How do you spot an Oscar nominee? They look just like all the others. Following his indictment of capitalism in Cosmopolis, Cronenberg sets his sights on Hollywood with this piercing look into celebrity culture, which rams home its venomous cliques with a queasy authenticity.
byNWR: House on Bare Mountain
Exploitation film maven Bob Cresse goes full drag as the matriarch of “Granny Good’s School for Good Girls” in this 1962 “nudie cutie”, which Nicolas Winding Refn has rescued from a closed film lab and restored. The result blends monster movie, lowbrow comedy, rock & roll and peep shows in bright candy colours.
Like Father, Like Son
A clever story of two boys switched at birth allows Japan’s gentle maestro Hirokazu to explore nature, nurture and the nuances of parenthood in this subtle, moving masterpiece. Read our full review
Female Human Animal
A retrospective of surrealist painter Leonora Carrington is the gateway to the fantasies of its curator, novelist Chloe. Inebriated by the mystery of the work and fed up with the world and the men around her, Chloe’s life soon becomes a dark and obsessive psychosexual nightmare.
Antonia.
Antonia Pozzi was born in 1912, the daughter of a Milanese lawyer, and began writing poetry at the age of sixteen. The film describes her family environment, her infatuation with one of her teachers at school, and her ties with young Milanese radicals during the fascist years.
L’Animale
After its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, MUBI shines a spotlight on this second film from Katharina Mückstein, who studied under Michael Haneke. It follows Mati, who loves to spend time with the boys bombing around the quarry on her motocross bike. But, alongside her parent’s troubled marriage, Mati’s motocross gang also cracks when she begins to feel an attraction for the self-confident Carla, and notions of friendship, love and sexuality become urgent.
F.J. Ossang: Treasure of the Bitch Islands
MUBI’s F.J. Ossang retrospective journeys further into the underground with an awesome punk sci-fi revision of The Odyssey. An entrancing journey alongside a group of madcap scientists to the darkest reaches of humankind’s fate, Treasure of the Bitch Islands is a molotov cocktail of anarchic beauty.
F.J. Ossang: The Case of the Morituri Divisions
This counter cultural epic follows the quest for survival fought by a collective of punk-youths in the gladiatorial arena of futurist Europe. One of them, Ettore, has become a star of this underworld yet soon revolts against the powers that be.
F.J. Ossang: Doctor Chance
MUBI concludes its close-up on F. J. Ossang with this feverish film noir-meets-road movie across the Atacama desert, starring Marisa Paredes and Joe Strummer as lovers on the run.
Suspiria
Before MUBI releases the remake in UK cinemas, revisit Dario Argento’s original candy-coloured nightmare, which follows American ballet-dancer Suzy Bannion, who arrives in Freiberg, Germany, to attend the prestigious Tans Academy – and immediately senses that something horribly evil lurks within the walls of the age-old institution.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
9 Fingers
Available until end of: 8th December
Senna
Available until end of: 9th December
Suspiria
Available until end of: 10th December
Kaagaz Ke Phool
Available until end of: 11th December
Bright Young Things
Available until end of: 12th December
Dharma Guns
Available until end of: 13th December
Hellzapoppin’
Available until end of: 14th December
I Am Love
Available until end of: 15th December
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Available until end of: 16th December