The Weekly MUBI Digest | 9th June 2018
David Farnor | On 09, Jun 2018
What do Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon, Kibbutz architect Samuel Bickels and Claire Denis have in common? They’re all on the way to MUBI in a typically diverse week of world cinema and old classics. They build up to the site’s exclusive release of Casa Roshell, the new film from Chilean director Camila José Donoso, which screened at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival – but before then, don’t miss the chance to catch up with MUBI’s other unmissable exclusives, including Slack Bay and The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
Trouble Every Day – 9th June
Claire Denis turns her inimitable eye to the vampire genre, with this 2001 horror starring Vincent Gallo. It follows Shane and June Brown, an American couple honeymooning in Paris in an effort to nurture their new life together, a life complicated by Shane’s mysterious and frequent visits to a medical clinic where cutting edge studies of the human libido are undertaken
Rumble Fish – 10th June
Dennis Hopper, Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon star in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 drama about Rusty James, an up-and-coming street hoodlum, who laments the old school days of the gangs when his older brother, The Motorcycle Boy, ran things as President of the Packers.
2+2 – 11th June
Thomas Ciulei’s 2014 film explores the unfortunate adventures of two good friends, Oscar and Tony, living in an imaginary country, Miranda, a bankrupt dictatorship. Oscar, a famous actor and Tony, director, have had enough and want to flee the country.
Bickels – 12th June
This 2016 documentary comprises a tour of 23 buildings located in Israel designed by Kibbutz architect Samuel Bickels. The majority of public spaces are directed towards the needs of different kibuttzim, constructed between 1942 and 1973, representing the ideas of the socialist communities of the time.
The Inertia Variations – 13th June
The man behind the legendary British band The The attempts to challenge the contemporary political landscape through his own 12-hour live, shortwave radio broadcast. But is he really done with making music? A request to write a new song for the show reveals old demons of inertia and bereavement.
Casa Roshell – 15th June
Music plays, drinks are served and the last boundaries are suspended: those between man and woman, gay, straight and bi, past and present, reality and fiction. The people chatting at the tables or waiting before the darkroom are shot to resemble characters from a film, impossibly glamorous, which doesn’t mean their stories aren’t true.
Other new releases on MUBI
Body Double
One of the most divisive auteurs out there, Brian De Palma’s style, tone and subject matter are perfectly encapsulated in Body Double, his 1984 thriller about a young actor’s obsessive spying on a beautiful woman in his neighbourhood. Irreverent and reverential, this sexy, stylish, twisted ode to Hitchcock De Palma at full throttle.
Raising Cain
When Jenny’s husband, a respected psychologist, takes a year off to help raise their daughter, she is totally unprepared for the emergence of his multiple personalities and of their fiendish plot to recreate the infamous experiments of his deranged father.
Hotel Salvation
Dayanand, 77, sees his coming death in a dream and insists that his business-minded son take him to die in a special hotel in the holy city of Varanasi to attain Salvation. Rajiv, although thoroughly inconvenienced by his father’s untimely demand, is left with no choice but to embark on this journey
The Glass Key
During the campaign for reelection, the crooked politician Paul Madvig decides to clean up his past, refusing the support of the gangster Nick Varna and associating to the respectable reformist politician Ralph Henry.
The Social Network
There has never been a more relevant time to re-watch David Fincher’s masterpiece, which charts the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). Read our full review
Another Country
An in-depth look into the traditions and struggles of the Australian indigenous community Ramingining, as told by the great David Gulpilil (Walkabout). Another Country is at once exuberant yet mournful: a documentary paean that doubles as an act of resistance in the face of colonial modernity.
Il Grido
In a rare male melodrama, a mechanic facing the end of an affair with a married woman wanders across the Italian countryside from the arms of one woman to another looking for satisfaction. Antonioni connects Italian neorealism with the director’s famous works of the 1960s.
Waste Land
Lives are transformed when international art star Vik Muniz collaborates with garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro.
Behind the Candelabra
Michael Douglas shines in this laugh-out-loud but warm comedy about Liberace, with Matt Damon equally impressive as young assistant, Scott Thorson. With cinematography and direction by Steven Soderbergh, music by the late Marvin Hamlisch and small roles for Dan Aykroyd and Debbie Reynolds, Behind the Candelabra premiered on HBO – but it is very much an A-List movie. Rob Lowe as a plastic surgeon, meanwhile, waltzes away with the whole show. Read our full review
Stand by Me
Rob Reiner’s take on Stephen King’s The Body, which sees four boys seeking adventure in the woods while looking for a missing teenager’s dead body, is nothing less than a masterpiece.
Imitation of Life
MUBI’s Douglas Sirk retrospective concludes with the director’s last movie in Hollywood, and last commercial picture — a coldly brilliant weepie, a tale of two intertwined families in which the materialist optimism is continually counterpointed by an emphasis upon racist tension and the degeneration of family bonds.
Come to Me, Paradise
In this sci-fi documentary, a drone spirit is summoned to the heart of Hong Kong where Filipina migrant workers gather and make public space their own.
The Burning Hell
Never intended for general exhibition, this evangelical outreach film was made to depict, in the most vivid cinematic terms, where non-believers and sinners shall go lest they be saved. Based on the sermons of a Southern Baptist preacher and directed by notorious exploitation filmmaker Ron Ormond, Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR rescued the film after its original 16mm negatives were destroyed in a flood in 2010.
Two Friends
Philippe Garrel’s son Louis picks up the camera for this, his debut feature as a writer-director. It follows Clément, a film extra who is madly in love with Mona, a salesgirl in a sandwich bar. Mona has a secret that makes her elusive. When Clément is desperate to win her heart, Abel, his best and only friend, comes to the rescue. The two friends set off in the adventure of conquering her.
The Lady Without Camelias
A small movie role for shopclerk Clara (Lucia Bosé) develops into a full-blown career as a screen siren. Tension erupts when her husband can no longer tolerate watching her frivolous cinema escapades, and pushes her into a “serious, artistic” production of the life of Joan of Arc.
Cannes Classics: 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.
Cannes Classics: Lost River
Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut follows Billy, a single mother of two, who is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld in a vanishing city, while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery if their family is to survive. Read our full review/
Cannes Classics: Slack Bay
Northern France, 1910. The bourgeois Van Peteghem family return to their towering mansion above ‘Slack Bay’ every summer. An unlikely romance blossoms between the mischievous Bille Van Peteghem and local mussel-gatherer, ‘Ma Loute’. Meanwhile, a series of mysterious disappearances are taking place. Read our full review.
New Jerusalem
An Evangelical Christian and a vet returning from Afghanistan work together at a tire shop. With little to do during their empty days, they dance around their inner conflicts and cultural differences.
Away We Go
John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph play a happy young couple who decide to go on a journey across the United States to find the perfect place for them to settle down and raise their child in Sam Mendes’ endearing, funny, sincere gem. Read our full review.
Lek and the Dogs
In his adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s play Ivan and the Dogs, experimental filmmaker Andrew Kötting travels to the Chilean desert to recreate the life of the young boy who left his Moscow apartment to live with a pack of wild dogs.
The Comedy
Indifferent even to the prospects of inheriting his father’s estate, Swanson, a desensitized, ageing Brooklyn hipster, strays into a series of reckless situations that may offer the promise of redemption or the threat of retribution.
Broken Flowers
Jim Jarmusch’s bittersweet comedy-drama sees an old man revisit his former lovers after an anonymous letter tells him he has a son. Released in 2005, it formed a double-bill with Lost in Translation that introduced a more melancholic, understated side to Bill Murray.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
Slack Bay
Available until end of: 9th June
Lost River
Available until end of: 10th June
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki
Available until end of: 11th June
A Time to Love and a Time to Die
Available until end of: 12th June
The Bridges of Sarajevo
Available until end of: 13th June
Refugiado
Available until end of: 14th June
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Available until end of: 15th June
The Ballad of Narayama
Available until end of: 16th June
Behind the Candelabra
Available until end of: 17th June
Stand By Me
Available until end of: 18th June
Imitation of Life
Available until end of: 19th June