The MUBI Weekly Digest | 28th March 2020
David Farnor | On 28, Mar 2020
MUBI is still offering a discount of £1 for three months, and it’s more than earning every pence this week. Its retrospective of the cool helmer Jean-Pierre Melville draws to a close with his elegant noir swansong, but there’s a Takashi Miike classic to fill the void, plus a retrospective of Joseph Losey – and, to top it off, the latest Andrew Kotting film.
And, of course, there’s the exclusive release of Bacurau, which you can read our review of here, and our interview with one of its directors here.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
Melville: Un Flic
Melville’s swansong noir follows Edouard, who spends his time chasing criminals. Nightclub owner Simon works with a small crew to execute daring heists with big payoffs. Meanwhile Cathy is torn between them. After a bank robbery in a small Riviera town goes wrong, a game of cat and mouse begins between Edouard and Simon’s gang.
Sisters – 29th March
Danielle is a model separated from her Siamese twin, Dominique. When her neighbour, an intrepid reporter, suspects Dominique of a brutal murder, she becomes dangerously ensnared in the sisters’ insidious sibling bond, and hires the help of a private detective to seek out the truth.
Eva (1962) – 30th March
Writer Tyvian Jones seems to have it all—an international best seller, an apartment in Rome, a gorgeous fiancé—but he’s bitter anyway. He meets his existential match in the mod seductress Eve. An emotional tyrant, her casual maneouvering forces Baker to confront his past and his weaknesses.
Visitor Q – 1st April
The mother is a heroin user and sex worker, beaten by her son. The father, an ex-TV reporter, sleeps with his daughter and films his son being beaten up. Into this dysfunctional family walks ‘Q’, a complete stranger, changing their lives for the better, finding a balance in their disturbing natures.
Nona, If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them – 2nd April
After an act of vengeance on the home of her ex-lover, Nona, 66, flees to her summer house on the Chilean coast. There, forest fires are spreading, but her home is undamaged. While houses go up in flames, Nona displays different sides of her character: the grandmother, the friend, the anarchist…
The Whalebone Box – 3rd April
Some time ago, a whalebone box that was found washed up on a remote beach was given to writer Iain Sinclair. Once touched the box can change lives. In 2018 filmmaker Andrew Kötting, photographer Anonymous Bosch and Sinclair take the box on a reverse pilgrimage from London back to the Isle of Harris.
Other new releases on MUBI
Bacurau
From Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius) and Juliano Dornelles comes a daring, intoxicating blend of neo-Western, siege thriller and political allegory—powerfully resonating with today’s Brazil. Read our our review here.
Neighbouring Sounds
The acclaimed Neighbouring Sounds is critic-turned-filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s impressive feature debut. Subtly yet sharply commenting on urban class tensions in Brazil through the city of Recife’s ominous sounds, this is haunting cinema—evoking a state of torpor hanging in the hot, heavy air.
Secretary
E. Edward Grey, a demanding lawyer, reluctantly seduces his secretary Lee Holloway, who was recently released from a mental institution to the care of her overbearing parents. Lee is turned on by Grey’s stern demeanour, and their employer-employee relationship becomes a sexual, sadomasochistic one.
Godard: The Image Book
Jean-Luc Godard returns with a bracing, confrontational essay film. Splicing together classic film clips and newsreel footage, often stretched, saturated and distorted almost beyond recognition, The Image Book interrogates our relationship with film, culture and global politics.
Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate
Saheiji, a resourceful, witty free spirit, is forced to stay on at a brothel to repay his debt. At first he’s regarded as an unwelcome guest who never leaves, but soon he endears himself to the guests, hosts, servants and attending ladies—solving their disputes with his wit.
Melville:Le Cercle Rouge
The perfect crime? No, but perhaps the perfect crime movie. A skilled thief who lives in studied elegance when he’s not languishing in jail plans an elaborate jewellery-store heist with two cohorts picked up almost at random: a notorious escaped convict and an alcoholic ex-cop. With a dogged inspector on their tale, they face impossible odds.
Melville: Le Doulous
Burglar Maurice has just finished his prison sentence. He murders Gilbert, a receiver, and steals the loot from another robbery. As Maurice prepares for another burglary, his friend Silien brings him all the necessary equipment. But Maurice doesn’t know that Silien is a police informant.
Melville: Army of Shadows
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Although he escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseille and exacts his revenge on the informant, Philippe must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis.
The Daughters of Fire
Two female lovers reunite after a long time. One wants to shoot a porn film, the other wants to visit her family. As they happen upon a woman during a bar fight with homophobes, they decide to hit the road, embarking on a polyamorous journey across Patagonia, picking up other women along the way.
Cocteau: Testament of Orpheus
An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being.
Cocteau: The Blood of a Poet
In a poet’s room, an armless statue abruptly comes to life. It invites the poet to step through a mirror and to discover another world. Strange places and characters present themselves to him. The poet tears himself away from these twisted fascinations and returns, with some difficulty, to his room.
Mustang
In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters are kept under strict lock and key by their aunt and uncle after an entirely innocent encounter with a group of boys. As marriages start being arranged, the sisters, driven by the same desire for freedom, rebel against the limitations imposed upon them. Directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven.
Bergman: The Rite
Three itinerant actors are accused of taking part in a performance deemed pornographic by the state’s authorities. As they are called to court, criminal interrogations and interpersonal confrontations ensue, causing them to expose their neuroses and inner psychological torments.
Bergman: Autumn Sonata
After seven years of separation, an internationally famous, icy concert pianist returns home to visit her long-suffering daughter. Over the course of a day and a long, painful night that the two spend together, they finally confront the bitter discord of their relationship.
Twentynine Palms
He is a photographer, scouting for locations. She goes with him because they’ve fallen in love. They discover the desert around the town of Twenty-nine Palms, lose themselves in nature’s splendour, make love, and hate one another, never suspecting that the danger doesn’t only lie within themselves.
A Countess from Hong Kong
Working with stars—Brando! Loren!—and in colour for the first time, Chaplin revived the soul of silent cinema & screwball comedy in this much maligned cry for modernity.
Domains
Aki has just confessed to murdering the daughter of her longtime friend, an episode that occurred while taking care of the child in the mother’s absence. Shifting the action to a rehearsal room, a series of script readings are undertaken in order to trace the backstory of the tragic incident.
Vengeance Trilogy: Oldboy
If you like your action raw, served with live octopus and involving a hammer, Park Chan-Wook’s twisting revenge thriller hits the nail firmly on the head. So to speak.
Vengeance Trilogy: Sympathy for Mr Vengeance
Urgently in need of the money to pay for his gravely ill sister’s kidney transplant, Ryu, a punky deaf-mute factory worker, resorts to kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy industrialist—an act of desperation which leads to a series of events that spiral into a bloody cycle of violence and revenge.
Vengeance Trilogy: Lady Vengeance
After being wrongfully convicted, a woman is imprisoned for 13 years and forced to give up her daughter. While in prison she gains the respect of her cellmates and plots her revenge on the man responsible. Once released, she begins her elaborate plan of retribution, but discovers a horrifying truth.
Pharos of Chaos
Sterling Hayden, the semi-retired actor, war hero, and writer passes his days living on a barge in France. He enjoys telling anecdotes, until finally opening up about his alcoholism, loneliness, “creative impotency,” and deepest shame: publicly naming names in Hollywood during the Red Scare.
Primer
Four friends and tech entrepreneurs invent a device in their garage which reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it. However, they soon discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities. Ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want…
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
The Wild Goose Love
Available until end of: 28th March
Leon Morin, Priest
Available until end of: 28th March
Existenz
Available until end of: 28th March
The Silence
Available until end of: 31st March
Chaotic Ana
Available until end of: 1st April
The Proposition
Available until end of: 2nd April
The Remembered film
Available until end of: 3rd April
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance
Available until end of: 4th April