This week’s new releases on BFI Player+ (8th April 2017)
David Farnor | On 08, Apr 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 Fear Eats the Soul. Fassbinder’s international breakthrough, this powerful drama tales inspiration from Douglas Sirk to follow an almost accidental romance between an ageing German woman and a Moroccan migrant worker more than 20 years her younger – and their bond, which crosses boundaries of race and age, sends shocking ripples through the society around them. The unconventional love story combines lucid social analysis with real emotional power.
What else is new? Here are the latest titles on BFI Player+ this week:
The Hunt
An excruciating look at what happens to one man’s life when a child wrongfully says he abused her, Thomas Vinterberg’s drama boasts an incredible performance from Mads Mikkelsen and prescience that shows no sign of fading. Devastatingly brilliant. Brilliantly devastating. Read our full review.
The Merchant of Four Seasons
A key milestone in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s career, this drama follows Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmüller), a former foreign legionnaire and fruit-peddler living in 1950s West Germany, who is pushed over the edge by an uncaring society.
Immoral Tales
Walerian Borowczyk presents four stories of sexual taboos throughout the ages, in his highly controversial classic of 1970s erotic cinema.
City of the Living Dead
Lucio Fulci’s sensationally gory zombie horror finds undead hordes overtaking a sleepy New England town, with only a reporter and a local psychic to stop them.
Symptoms
The official British Palme d’Or entry at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, Symptoms is a sophisticated modern gothic horror film exploring the themes of sexual repression and psychosis.
The Beyond
Lucio Fulci’s Italian zombie-horror classic about a New Orleans hotel built upon one of the seven gateways to Hell.
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.
A BFI Player+ subscription costs £4.99 a month with a 30-day free trial. For more information, visit http://player.bfi.org.uk.