The MUBI Weekly Digest | 16th November 2019
David Farnor | On 16, Nov 2019
MUBI’s run of Haneke and Ospina career highlights continues this week, with a side portion of Coen brothers comedy to lighten the mood and a psychedelic trip courtesy of Sebastián Silva. But while it might seem daft to highlight a cinema release on a streaming platform, MUBI’s strength this week lies in its MUBI Go scheme, which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers. After last week’s offer to see A Dog Called Money at participating theatres – MUBI’s exclusive new release is now available to stream – this week MUBI is offering a ticket to see The Irishman on the big screen. (You can see our guide to where The Irishman is showing in cinemas here, although not all cinemas will be participating in MUBI Go.)
Otherwise, don’t miss your chance to catch London Film Festival favourite Zombi Child this week – you can read our interview with director Bertrand Bonello here.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus – 16th November
While on a trip in Chile with friends, insensitive American Jamie (Michael Cera) drunkenly invites an eccentric woman to join them and experience the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus. The woman’s free nature clashes with Jamie’s self-absorbed personality as they head to the desert for a disturbing, psychedelic trip. This Sebastián Silva joint is a low-budget gem, sweet and stoned in equal measure.
Haneke: Hidden – 17th November
Georges, who hosts a TV literary review, receives anonymous packages containing videos of himself with his family, shot secretly from the street, and alarming, obscure drawings. There’s no commentary, no threats, but the message is clear: You’re being watched. Slowly, dark revelations come to light.
Ospina: It All Started at the End – 18th November
“Grupo de Cali” (also known as “Caliwood”), a group of friends in love with cinema, who in the midst of the partying and historical chaos between 1971 and 1991, managed to produce a body of work now considered a fundamental part of Colombia’s film history.
My Skin, Luminous – 19th November
Having lost the pigment in his skin, Matias, an infirmed orphan at a Michoacán primary school, has been quarantined from his classmates. Meanwhile, the presence and words of novelist Mario Bellatin offer the prospect of healing to his ailing body.
The Devil’s Wanton (or Prison) – 20th November
A film director is approached by his old math teacher with a great movie idea: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. The director is skeptical, but subsequent events in the life of a writer friend and his young sex worker lover make him reconsider the math teacher’s idea.
Intolerable Cruelty – 21st November
Miles, a successful divorce lawyer, feels something is missing from his lifestyle despite his wealth and status. When he uses his skills to ensure that gold-digger Marylin gets nothing in her divorce from his client, she vows revenge, leading to their mutual one-upmanship and increasing attraction.
The Palm Beach Story – 22nd November
Claudette Colbert intends to leave her husband, Joel McCrea, a struggling New York architect, and move to Palm Beach in a matter-of-fact search for a wealthy husband—to help fund the work of her true love, McCrea. Not willing to give her up, McCrea follows in hot pursuit.
Other new releases on MUBI
Ozon: Water Drops on Burning Rocks
Working from an unproduced play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ozon made one of the most inventive films of his career with this 70s period piece. A synthesis of subversive genres: part musical, part sex farce, a little melodrama, Water Drops on Burning Rocks is a remarkably sardonic love story.
Ozon: Criminal Lovers
With By the Grace of God in UK cinemas, revisit François Ozon’s 1999 thriller. One day in a French provincial town, Alice decides to convince Luc, her young, impressionable boyfriend, to kill Said, a classmate who’s a real show-off. They stage a macabre scene and do the terrible deed. After running away, they discover chaos instead of the fantasy life they imagined as outlaws.
Ozon: Under the Sand
Marie and Jean have been happily married for years and are on holiday in Western France. As is their custom, they spend their holiday in a cottage on the coast. When her husband goes swimming and, after a brief afternoon nap, Marie wakes up, she finds that her husband has not returned.
Ozon: 5×2
As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, five milestone moments in their relationship: their divorce, a tense dinner with friends, the birth of their child, their joyous wedding and their first encounter.
MUBI Release: A Dog Called Money
Award-winning war photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy explores the creative inspiration behind PJ Harvey’s album The Hope Six Demolition Project, filming her in a London recording studio and charting their travels together in Afghanistan, Kosovo and the U.S.
LFF:Yves Saint Laurent: The Last Collections
As Yves Saint Laurent, one of the greatest Parisian haute couture designers, draws the sketches for his final collection, behind the scenes, Pierre Bergé manages a series of events to celebrate the fashion icon as a modern myth.
Haneke: The Piano Teacher
Erika, a piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory, lives with her tyrannical mother in a hermetically sealed world of love-hate and dependency in which there is no room for men. Then one of Erika’s pupils decides to seduce his teacher…
Haneke: 71 Fragments of a Chronology of a Chance
On Christmas Eve 1993, a 19-year-old student kills a number of complete strangers without any apparent reason behind it. Starting with the TV newscasts of the event, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance tracks a group of people who are randomly involved in such climactic violence.
A Paper Tiger
MUBI’s Luis Ospina tribute continues with this apocryphal doc playfully braiding reality, fiction and historical revisionism. Inviting the audience to participate in a game of deception, A Paper Tiger is a meditation on the elusive meaning of art—and cinema—where truth and lies become indiscernible.
Alice T.
Alice is an adopted teenager who has a strained relationship with her adoptive mother. Being an endless source of problems, Alice forges lies and blurs the lines between the fiction she creates and her real existence. One day, Alice confesses that she is pregnant and that she wants to keep the baby.
The Birds
Hitchcock’s classic horror remains one of his best.
The Vampires of Poverty
Two filmmakers travel around impoverished sectors of the cities of Bogotá and Cali in search of the images of abjection needed to complete a documentary commissioned by German TV. Meanwhile, another camera captures these “vampire” filmmakers feeding off the misery of their marginal subjects.
Resnais: Last Year At Marienbad
Part mystery, part fever dream, and possibly a ghost story, Last Year At Marienbad follows a married woman, A, and a man, X, through the empty rooms of a luxurious, baroque hotel that time forgot. X tries to persuade the incredulous A that they met in the same place the year before.
Resnais: Stavisky
Biarritz, 1933. Charm and talent help small-time swindler Serge Alexandre, alias Stavisky, to bribe his way into the centre of French political power. But when his great scam involving millions gets exposed, he brings the government to the verge of collapse and the country to the brink of civil war.
byNWR: Murder in Mississippi
Torn-from-the-headlines exploitation or daring social commentary? Joseph P. Mawra’s film is a little of both, using the true story of the killing of civil rights workers in the American deep South as a gritty springboard for another ultra-low-budget entry from the director of Chained Girls.
“Restored from the only 35mm release print known to exist, as all original material on the film is considered to be lost, similarly to many mid-60s grindhouse films. Certain imperfections in the source material were unavoidable, but this represents the best digital master of the film to date.” —NWR
Animal Kingdom
G’dayfellas! David Michôd’s Australian gangster flick about a teen trying to work out his place in a violent family is one of those modern masterpieces that will go down in history as launching several previously unknown talents into Hollywood – and propelling others even higher. Guy Pearce steals scenes as a cop trying to get James Frecheville’s teen to be an informer and Jacki Weaver amazes as his ruthless mother, but Ben Mendelsohn dominates the screen as the Cody’s intense patriarch. Strewth, it’s good.
The Two Irenes
By chance, Irene discovers that there is another 13-year-old Irene living in the same town. Curiously, she observes the confident, cheerful girl who lives alone with her mother. She is fascinated by this other world beyond the bounds of her own well-to-do and traditional family.
Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
The Monty Python collective explains it all in this episodic comedy. Overworked insurance clerks are staging a mutiny. They succesfully gain control of the building. But the building suddenly turns into a ship…
Port of Call
Berit, a suicidal young woman living in a working-class port town, unexpectedly falls for Gösta, a sailor on leave. Haunted by a troubled past and held in a vice grip by her domineering mother, Berit begins to hope that her relationship with Gösta might save her from self-destruction.
Peeping Tom
A psychotic assistant cameraman at a film studio uses his camera equipment to film the deaths of sex workers he chooses as his victims, and unsuspecting women for his documentary on fear in Michal Powell’s seminal horror. Peeping Tom explores his childhood traumas, sexual crises, and murderous revenge as an adult.
The Souvenir
In a groundbreaking new deal with Curzon Artificial Eye, MUBI brings The Souvenir to its streaming line-up just weeks after its cinema debut. British master Joanna Hogg delves into her own memories in this staggering work of heartbreaking intimacy, at once an alluring and shattering study on privilege, artistic creation and first love. With astounding performances by Honor Swinton Byrne (a revelation!), her own mother Tilda and Tom Burke.
L’Enfant Secret
A hidden gem from Philippe Garrel’s haunting filmography, this pocket melodrama meditates on loss, filmmaking, and the obstacles of an unstable relationship. Borrowing biographical details from the French auteur’s own love story with the singer Nico, L’enfant secret is a work of intimate poetry.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
Zombi Child
Available until end of: 16th November
The Devil’s Backbone
Available until end of: 17th November
Pan’s Labyrinth
Available until end of: 18th November
Carlos
Available until end of: 19th November
Tiresia
Available until end of: 20th November
M
Available until end of: 21st November
Benny’s Video
Available until end of: 22nd November
The Souvenir
Available until end of: 23rd November