David Farnor | On 18, Jan 2020

MUBI continues its annual awards season this week with Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her, but the real stars are the lesser-known titles, including Spike Lee’s overlooked Clockers, and Yi Okseop’s Maggie, fresh from 2018’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. Throw in the chance to catch Todd Haynes’ Safe and you have a line-up equally worthy of awards acclaim.

And, with To the Wonder available on MUBI, don’t miss your chance to use MUBI Go (which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers) to see his latest, A Hidden Life, at participating cinemas.

What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:

 

This week on MUBI

Clockers – 18th January

Strike, 19, is a small-time street drug dealer for Rodney Little, who wants Strike to kill a former dealer who stole from him. When the man turns up dead, Strike is suspected. But before homicide detective Rocco Klein has a chance to investigate, Strike’s brother, Victor, confesses to the crime. Spike Lee’s 1995 crime drama is an easily overlooked gem.

Awards: Death Becomes Her – 19th January

After losing her man to a movie star and friend years prior, a novelist returns home to confront them, looking radiant. Her ex-husband’s new wife wants to know her secret, and discovers the existence of an elixir which grants eternal life. But she soon finds out that immortality has a price.

Godard: Made in USA – 20th January

Paula Nelson, a hard boiled detective, goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover. Once there, she learns that he is dead and decides to investigate. In her hotel room, she kills a man whose body is later found in the apartment of writer David Goodis. Paula will soon be arrested and interrogated.

Bergman: The Devil’s Eye – 21st January

The devil has a stye in his eye, caused by the purity of a vicar’s daughter. To get rid of it, he sends Don Juan up from hell to seduce the 20 year old Britt-Marie and to rob her of her virginity and her belief in love. However, she resists him, and in turn Don Juan falls in love with her.

Maggie – 22nd January

After a radiologist is snapped having sex in the X-ray room, the image swiftly circulates in the hospital. A nurse fears that she might be one of the randy skeletons depicted. Together with her boss, the woman embarks on a mission to determine whether human beings are ever really worth believing.

The Spoilers – 23rd January

Set against the backdrop of the Nome Gold Rush in Alaska, this tale of corruption follows honest miner Roy Glennister who gets swindled out of his gold mine claim. He then turns to the seductive saloon singer Cherry Malotte for assistance in his battle with crooked commissioner Alexander McNamara.

Safe – 24th January

Carol White, a 1980s Los Angeles housewife, comes down with a debilitating illness in Todd Haynes’ 1995 drama. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. Welcoming retreat, she finally ends up in a New Age healing centre.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Dazed and Confused

Among the best teen films ever made, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused eavesdrops on a group of seniors-to-be and incoming freshmen. A launching pad for a number of future stars, Linklater’s first studio effort also features endlessly quotable dialogue and a rocking rock and roll soundtrack.

The Beguiled

During the Civil War, a wounded Union soldier is cared for and lusted after in an all-female southern boarding school. His presence at first scares the girl, but quickly starts off a series of diverse sexual frustrations and jealousies. But his shrewd handling of the women leads to brutal vengeance.

To The Wonder

Neil is a man torn between two loves: Marina, the European woman who comes to the United States to be with him, and Jane, the old flame he reconnects with from his hometown. Neil’s doubts about his life and loves are reflected in the crisis of faith experienced by Father Quintana.

Awards: Capturing the Friedmans

The Friedmans are a seemingly typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family—but their world is instantly transformed when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes.

Awards: Imitation of Life

A young, struggling widow and single mother takes in a black housekeeper and her light-skinned daughter. The two women start a pancake store which becomes a successful business, however they face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.

Kawashima: Suzaki Paradise: Red Light

A jobless young couple, Yoshigi and Tsutue, wind up at the outskirts of the Suzaki red-light district in Tokyo. Tsutue talks her way into a job pouring sake for male customers at a small bar, while Yoshigi is shunted off into a nearby noodle shop.

Bergman: Smiles of a Summer Night

In turn-of-the-century Sweden, four men and four women attempt to navigate the laws of attraction. During a weekend in the country, the women collude to force the men’s hands in matters of the heart, exposing male pretensions and insecurities along the way.

First Films First: River of Grass – 4th January

Indie film legend Kelly Reichardt kicked off her career with this 1994 drama, which follows Cozy, a thirtyish Florida housewife bored to tears with her drudging life. She runs away with Lee, a young loser in search of thrills. But after accidentally shooting a man, Cozy and Lee try to go on the lam as every outlaw couple before them—without quite ever getting it right.

First Films First: The Pleasure of Being Robbed – 5th January

Before Uncut Gems arrives, go back to Josh Safdie’s directorial debut, which began as a short film. A curious and lost Eleonore looks for something everywhere, even in the bags of strangers who find themselves sadly smiling only well after she’s left their lives. They owe her their thanks.

First Films First: The Last Battle – 6th January

Luc Besson’s debut is set in a post-apocalyptic future where only a few humans are left, and an unknown trauma has robbed mankind of their ability to speak. “The Man” is an isolated survivor wandering the hostile streets of a collapsed civilisation. He meets his nemesis, The Brute, a violent thug determined to destroy him.

First Films First: Unrelated – 7th January

Catch a young Tom Hiddleston in Joanna Hogg’s debut film from 2007, which sees a forty-something woman on a Tuscan break fall in with a group of partying teens.

The Cow – 8th January

In a small village in Iran, Hassan cherishes his cow more than anything in the world. While he is away, the cow mysteriously dies, and the villagers protectively try to convince Hassan the cow has wandered off. Grief stricken, Hassan begins to believe he is his own beloved bovine.

Godard: Alphaville – 9th January

A surreal missing person case sends an American private investigator by the name of Lemmy Caution on an interplanetary journey to the futuristic city of Alphaville, where he becomes at odds with the sinister ruler of the town.

Godard: Pierrot le Fou – 10th January

Pierrot escapes his bourgeoisie existence by taking to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne. Being pursued by foreign thugs, they embark on a haphazard crime spree through the French countryside all the way to the Mediterranean.

Vertigo

In San Francisco, an ex-police officer who suffers from an intense fear of heights rescues a mysterious blonde from the bay and must unravel the secrets of the past to find the key to his future. The pair become trapped in a dizzying web of mistaken identity, passion and murder.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

A dangerous combination of radiation and insecticide causes the unfortunate Scott Carey to shrink, slowly but surely, until he is only a few inches tall. His home becomes a wilderness where he must survive everything from spiders living in the cellar to his beloved cat.

Melancholia

Another planet is on a collision course with Earth. While some would panic or take their clothes off, Lars von Trier uses the scenario as the backdrop for an exploration of the disintegrating relationship between two sisters. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg are fantastic.

First Films First: Corpo Celeste

Thirteen year-old Marta, her mother, and sister move from Switzerland to a small Calabrian town in Alice Rohrwacher’s directorial debut. Marta is sent to the local church to prepare for her Catholic confirmation and hopefully make new friends. But the religion she finds there, and how it dominates people’s lives, is strange.

First Films First: The White Sheik

Ivan Cavalli brings his new wife Wanda to Rome in Federico Fellini’s directorial debut. What ensues is the least romantic honeymoon in history – a rigid schedule of family meetings and audiences with the Pope. But Wanda, dreaming of the dashing hero of a photo-strip cartoon, drifts off in search of the White Sheik.

First Films First: The Sugarland Express

Down-home gal Lou Jean busts her incarcerated husband Clovis out of prison with a plan to retrieve their young son from foster care in Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut. The plan involves the kidnapping of a police officer. With a fleet of cars full of cops armed to the teeth, and reporters on their heels, they set out across Texas…

Lonely Are the Brave

Kirk Douglas is justly commended for using his fame to support unusual film productions, and this late period western is one of his boldest ventures. Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo adapts the environmentalist novelist Edward Abbey to redefine the idea of the outsider cowboy for a new age, as a fiercely independent cowboy who obstinately resists modernization arranges to have himself locked up in jail in order to escape with an old friend who has been sentenced to the penitentiary. When the principled friend refuses to leave, the cowboy futilely attempts to escape to Mexico on horseback.

Abbas Kiarostami: Taste of Cherry

Middle-aged Mr. Badii wishes to die in a society where suicide is considered an abomination. Driving in the hills above Tehran, he searches for an accomplice who is willing to bury him after he is dead. He meets an assortment of different characters, but each have reasons to turn down the job.

Abbas Kiarostami: The Wind Will Carry Us

rreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. While death hovers around the corner, Behzad gains perspectives on life and spirituality as he befriends the locals and experiences nature’s majesty, changing his own attitudes as a result.

Brief Encounters: GUO4

A confrontation between two swimmers in a locker room. The framing of traditionally macho scenarios in a homoerotic context takes its cues from the covert porn of Bob Mizer.

Three Colours: Blue

MUBI begins a look back at Krzysztof Kieślowski’s iconic trilogy with Blue. The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom, but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.

Three Colours: White

Karol Karol, a Polish immigrant living in France, is a hairdresser who opts to leave Paris for his native Warsaw when his wife sues him for divorce (her reason: their marriage was never consummated) and then frames him for arson. Karol Karol, in return, plans an elaborate revenge plot.

Three Colours: Red

Kieślowski closes his trilogy in grand fashion with this mind-boggling, unconventional romance: a story of fate and chance in an interconnected society.

Undertow

The versatile director of such disparate films as George Washington and Pinapple Express (and Silver Bear winner at Berlinale for Prince Avalanche!), David Gordon Green scored with this unsettling look at life in the American South, starring Jamie Bell.

 

A monthly subscription to MUBI costs £9.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial. A monthly subscription including MUBI GO costs £14.99 a month.

 

Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

The Return
Available until end of: 18th January

Leviathan
Available until end of: 19th January

Three Colors: Red
Available until end of: 20th January

Le Petit Soldat
Available until end of: 21st January

Contempt
Available until end of: 22nd January

The Big Lebowski
Available until end of: 23rd January

Le Havre
Available until end of: 24th January

Holy Motors
Available until end of: 25th January

A Lesson in Love
Available until end of: 26th January

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