This week’s new releases on BFI Player+ (18th March 2017)
David Farnor | On 18, Mar 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 Love and Death on Long Island. John Hurt stars in Richard Kwietnioski’s comedy of fame and obsession about an older man, who becomes infatuated with a young Hollywood actor (Jason Priestley), and proceeds to track him down. Kermode argues the film is “an overlooked gem” from the filmography of the late actor.
What else is new? Here are the latest titles on BFI Player+ this week:
Love Me Till Monday
Justin Hardy’s low-budget comedy-drama follows the attempts of 20-something Rebecca (Georgia Maguire) to find a bloke. Stuck in a dead-end office job, she hooks up with a string of men, but they only ever seem to last a weekend or two. Do they know where their relationship is going? Do Rebecca’s witching hour activities have any relevance to the plot? Love Me Till Monday drifts along with an aimless earnestness that both frustrates and suits its protagonist. Is she a witch? Goodness knows. But the cute honesty of her performance certainly casts a spell. Read our full review
Burning an Illusion
Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher’s London.
Fata Morgana
Herzog’s intense, dreamlike meditation on desert life as if seen by an alien.
Before Stonewall
Director Greta Schiller captures the testimonies of those who dared to challenge the world and help create the modern gay community, before the riots took place at the Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969. Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, Barbara Gittings, Harry Hay and Ann Bannon join the group of interviewes.
Le Mepris
Jean-Luc Godard’s caustic look at compromised creativity in the filmmaking world has superb images, music and acting from Piccoli, Bardot and Palance.
The Railway Children
This adaptation of E. Nesbit’s 1906 novel sees three children and their mother forced to swap Edwardian city luxury for genteel rural poverty up north. The nearby railway gives them something to take an interest in – a source of adventure and new friends – and their can-do cheerfulness only occasionally cracks.
Break My Fall
Four young friends find themselves at a critical juncture in their lives, in this drama about the lives of young Londoners.
A BFI Player+ subscription costs £4.99 a month with a 30-day free trial. For more information, visit http://player.bfi.org.uk.