New releases and coming soon to MUBI UK (24th June 2017)
David Farnor | On 24, Jun 2017
After kicking off their Cannes Takeover with Caro Diario, MUBI delves back into Nanni Moretti’s back catalogue this week, with a triple-bill of the director’s early comedies.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription streaming service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
I Am Self-Sufficient – 24th June
MUBI kicks off a triple-bill of Moretti’s little-seen early comedies. Shot on Super 8, this debut feature already boasts a perfect balance between autobiography, social commentary and satire, launching what would become the Moretti touch.
Ecce Bombo – 25th June
MUBI’s Moretti marathon continues with Ecce Bombo, which delicately unfurls the lives of its young characters — their anxieties, politics and romantic ambitions — with a graceful sense of humour distinct to the director. A slight yet key work in Moretti’s oeuvre.
Golden Dreams – 26th June
MUBI Moretti marathon concludes with this confessional self-inquiry into filmmaking, political ennui, and men’s relations with their mothers.
AHLAAM – 27th June
The disparate lives of shell-shocked soldier Ali, medical student Mehdi and bride Ahlaam — whose fiancé was kidnapped by Saddam Hussein’s forces on their wedding day — converge in a psychiatric hospital in Mohamed Al-Daradji’s drama.
Point Blank – 28th June
After being double-crossed and left for dead, a mysterious man named Walker single-mindedly tries to retrieve the rather inconsequential sum of money that was stolen from him in John Boorman’s action triller.
Edith Walks – 29th June
Hot on the heels of its cinema release, Andrew Kotting’s latest experimental documentary arrives on MUBI. The 60-minute-and-66-second feature film is inspired by a walk from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex – a pilgrimage carried out in memory of Edith Swan Neck.
Through a Glass Darkly – 30th June
MUBI’s Ingmar Bergman retrospective reaches the 1960s with the director’s first film shot in Fårö, the remote island where he lived until his death. An Academy Award winner, this masterful study on madness—with an astounding Harriet Andersson—inaugurates a major theme in the auteur’s work: human frailty in front of God’s silence.
Other new releases on MUBI
3:10 to Yuma
Glenn Ford stars in Delmer Daves’ iconic western, which sees outlaw leader Ben Wade captured in a small town, only for small-time rancher Dan Evans to agree to take him in secret to the nearest town with a railway station to await the train to the court at Yuma. The only problem? Wade’s gang are on the move to get their leader back. Moral ambiguity and serious action make for one of the great entries in the genre.
Le Moulin
MUBI’s latest Special Dicovery is Huang Ya-Li’s 2015 debut. With variety of form and a graceful touch, the expansive yet sensitive film is detailed immersion into a group of writers in Taiwan. Spanning three decades of political turmoil and war, we watch their struggle to create art.
Viridiana
MUBI’s Luis Buñuel double begins with his Palme d’Or winner masterpiece — an irreverent, controversial scan of Franco’s Spain and Catholic hypocrisy infamously branded blasphemous by the Vatican.
The Exterminating Angel
In classic Buñuelian fashion, a perfect storytelling conceit gives way to one of the most comic and pleasurable attacks on the power structures inherent in contemporary high societies, as a dinner party sees the wealthy guests suddenly unable to leave, trapping them in the room for hours and days, exposing the truths beneath their facade.
Camille Claudel 1915
Bruno Nuytten’s biography of Camille Claudel, sister of writer Paul Claudel, whose enthusiasm impresses already-famous sculptor Auguste Rodin.
Being 14
Helene Zimmer’s 2015 drama shows us the lives and turbulent adventures of a bunch of teenagers, as seen through the eyes of three young girls with one last year to go before high school.
Wild Strawberries
MUBI’s Ingmar Bergman retrospective continues with the 1957 drama that catapulted Bergman to international acclaim. Through flashback sequences, fantasies and dreams, a professor goes on a voyage of self-reflection and discovery. In doing so, he muses on the success and failures of his past, while finding peace in his impending death.
Moneyball
Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are on excellent form in this drama about unsuccessful baseball prodigy Billy Beane (Pitt), who becomes the manager of the Oakland A’s – and comes up with a radical way to build a better team using maths. (Read our full review.)
The Seventh Seal
Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (Max von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges him to a fateful game of chess. Much studied, imitated, even parodied, but never outdone, Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece is a stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning.
King of New York
Christopher Walken is on fine form in Abel Ferrara’s 1990s New York film, as a ruthless drug lord, who is released from prison and wants to redeem his past by using his drug profits to build a hospital for underprivileged kids. He challenges his fellow criminals to participate, but when they refuse, he has to do things the hard way…
Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle, an unstable Vietnam war veteran working as cabbie in New York, where the sleazy nightlife drives him to try and save a young prostitute (Jodie Foster). Scorsese’s iconic tracking shot highlights the violence of Bickle’s mind, but it’s Bernard Herrmann’s soundtrack that gives the film its power, as a mournful sax sings notes of false romance and redemption – and true alienation.
Gilda
“Gilda, are you decent?” A woman’s face appears from the bottom of the screen, throwing her hair back. “Me? Sure. I’m decent.” It’s one of the most memorable entrances an actress could ask for, and boy, did Rita Hayward know how to use it. When Charles Vidor’s film noir was first released in 1946, the posters rushed to proclaim that there was no other woman like her. And they were right. A classic femme fatale, she smouldered like no one else in what is quite possibly the sexiest film ever made. Read our full review.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
Over the Years
Available until end of: 24th June
Time of the Gypsies
Available until end of: 25th June
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Available until end of: 26th June
The Wind of the Night
Available until end of: 27th June
Gilda
Available until end of: 28th June
The Hitch-hiker
Available until end of: 29th June
Nightfall
Available until end of: 30th June
In a Lonely Place
Available until end of: 1st July
The Reckless Moment
Available until end of: 2nd July
Taxi Driver
Available until end of: 3rd July
Wild Innocence
Available until end of: 4th July