David Farnor | On 26, Oct 2019

With Halloween almost upon us, MUBI is breaking out some big horror classics this week, from Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom to Hitchcock’s The Birds – joining Alfred’s Psycho (and its remake). Perhaps the biggest shock of the week, though, was the surprise release yesterday of Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, as MUBI inks a new deal with Curzon to bring films to its streaming service hot on the heels of the cinema release. This coming week, another film’s coming straight from the big screen: LFF favourite Yves Saint Laurent.

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

 

This week on MUBI

Criminal Lovers – 26th October

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.

Peeping Tom – 27th October

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.

Animal Kingdom – 28th October

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.

LFF:Yves Saint Laurent: The Last Collections – 30th October

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.

The Birds – 31st October

Hitchcock’s classic horror remains one of his best.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

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.

M

Yolande Zauberman’s documentary is a bracing investigative exposé on a personal level. A deeply wrought story of one man’s heartbreaking trauma and confrontation with his past, the film also shockingly finds new victims inside a deeply private community. A painful revelation—it is hard to look away.

Benny’s Video

Michael Haneke’s 1992 drama is a shocking, horrible piece of cinema. Benny at 14: a middle-class adolescence, absent parents most of the time, an effective void blurred in the world of video. The pictures he feeds on are overshadowing his sense of reality. Soon after, Benny loses his mind and kills a girl while filming the murder with his video camera.

Del Toro: The Devil’s Backbone

Long before Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro creeped the hell out of audiences with his gentle horror, The Devil’s Backbone. Set in a Spanish orphanage during the Civil War, it’s not long until the ghost of a missing child begins to appear to the kids. Independently produced by Pedro Almodóvar, it’s a typically grounded horror from del Toro, which focuses on the human as much as the supernatural, creating a sentimental edge that makes the scares far more powerful. Spine-tingling stuff. Read our review

Del Toro: Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy fairytale horror is a masterpiece bursting with scares, sentiment and stunning imagination. Read our review

Carlos

Edgar Ramirez delivers a starmaking turn in Olivier Assayas’ lengthy, impressive and engrossing biopic. Read our review

Tiresia

With Zombi Child now on MUBI, go back to Bertrand Bonello’s 2016 thriller, which follows Tiresia, a Brazilian transsexual who begins a life-changing transformation while being held captive by an obsessed man. Once blinded and left for dead by her admirer, she is cared for by a teenage girl. In physical limbo between genders, Tiresia discovers a gift for premonition.

LFF: Beanpole

An entrancing immersion into post-war turmoil and a towering ode to female resilience — with tour-de-force performances and a jaw-dropping use of colour. Read our review.

LFF: Zombi Child

Haiti, 1962. A man is brought back from the dead only to be sent to the living hell of the sugarcane fields. In Paris, 55 years later, at the prestigious Légion d’honneur boarding school, a Haitian girl confesses an old family secret to a group of new friends—with unthinkable consequences. Read our review – or click here to read our interview with director Bertrand Bonello.

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

Mariana, an outspoken young artist, is attempting to an ambitious project to reconstruct the anti-Semitic 1941 Odessa Massacre. While she develops her spectacular, she is forced to confront and overcome objections from the authorities and locals hired as extras in order to see her vision through.

Che: The Argentine

The first film in this two-part Che Guevara epic tracks Che’s rise in the Cuban Revolution, from doctor to commander to revolutionary hero. After joining Fidel Castro’s rebels and journeying to Cuba in 1956, he quickly grasps the art of guerrilla warfare, ultimately toppling Batista’s dictatorship.

Che: Guerrilla

Following the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara, at the peak of his fame and power, vanishes without a trace. Resurfacing in Bolivia, he sets about recruiting insurgents to help him spread the revolutionary message. But communication lines are broken, support is lacking, and the CIA closes in on him.

Island

Across the water on the Isle of Wight four individuals experience the end of life. Illness progresses, relationships shift, and we are witness to rarely seen and intensely private moments.

The Seventh Continent

Haneke’s debut feature film is inspired by a true story of an Austrian middle class family that committed suicide. The film chronicles the last years of the family, which consists of Georg, an engineer; his wife Anna, an optician; and their young daughter, Eva.

The Transfiguration

A harrowing tale of obsession and young love in the far reaches of NYC.

Pixote: The Law of the Weakest

A visceral look at the street kids of São Paulo, with echoes of Buñuel’s Los Olvidados but with a raw authenticity of its own.

Straub-Huillet: Communists

MUBI’s Straub-Huillet retrospective concludes the most recent feature by Straub (Huillet died in 2006), which composes scenes from their movies to reveal a story told across their work: that of the attempt to forge community and resistance.

Suspiria (2018)

Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson star in a new take on the 1977 original cult classic, with a mesmeric score by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.

Suspiria (1977)

Dario Argento’s original is a psychedelic horror classic – a gothic nightmare told in exceptionally vivid colour, and a rich exercise in heightened style.

Psycho (1960)

Shockingly effective in 1960, the brilliance of Hitchcock’s horror remains undimmed to this day.

Psycho (1998)

Gus Van Sant’s remake — shot by Christopher Doyle in colour — is a brazenly experimental film made in the mainstream.

 

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

 

Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

Sweet Dreams
Available until end of: 26th October

The Father of My Children
Available until end of: 27th October

Goodbye First Love
Available until end of: 28th October

Mar
Available until end of: 29th October

The Believer’s Heaven
Available until end of: 30th October

Two Shots Fired
Available until end of: 31st October

Veslemoy’s Song
Available until end of: 1st November

Psycho (1960)
Available until end of: 2nd November

Psycho (1998)
Available until end of: 3rd November

Suspiria (1977)
Available until end of: 4th November

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