David Farnor | On 10, Sep 2017

Heard of BFI Player? Well, there’s also BFI Player+, a subscription service that offers an all-you-can-eat selection of hand-picked classics.

Every Friday, Mark Kermode highlights one of the collection’s titles with a video introduction. This week, it’s Belle de Jour. Mark Kermode is tempted once more by Luis Buñuel’s sensational satire about the hidden desires of an apparently placid bourgeois housewife, which established actor Catherine Deneuve as a major international star.

What else is new? Here are the latest titles on BFI Player+ this week:

Whisky Galore!

Classic Ealing comedy about the mayhem that ensues when a Scotch-laden ship runs aground off the coast of the Outer Hebrides.

Inferno (1980)

Dario Argento’s baroque, operatic horror follows a student who discovers a powerful witch living in a New York City apartment block.

Nosferatu

This influential Dracula adaptation contains some of the most famous images of expressionist film, with a new score by Hammer composer James Bernard.

Fitzcarraldo

One of Werner Herzog’s most acclaimed and audacious films, Fitzcarraldo tells the incredible story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an opera-loving fortune hunter who dreams of bringing opera to the heart of the Peruvian jungle.

A Hijacking

Captain Phillips made waves in cinemas, but this similar Danish gem, released in the same year, deserves not to be overlooked. Tobias Lindholm’s thriller delivers the story of a company trying to negotiate the release of its cargo and crew from pirates with gut-churning realism. Its quiet, natural approach suggests a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than a piece of fiction, making powerful points about globalisation while never losing sight of the personal stakes. Read our full review.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Jan Svankmajer is an animator who needs no introduction. Here, BFI Player+ brings subscribers one of his many stunning works: a 15-minute short based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

Further Beyond

Desperate Optimists’ deliriously deconstructed biopic of the extraordinary Ambrosio O’Higgins, who left Ireland to become the captain general of Chile in the Spanish Empire.

 

A BFI Player+ subscription costs £4.99 a month with a 30-day free trial. For more information, visit http://player.bfi.org.uk.
 

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