The MUBI Weekly Digest | 8th February 2020
David Farnor | On 08, Feb 2020
What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than to show one of the most achingly romantic films ever made? Yes, MUBI is celebrating this week in yearning style with Wong Kar-wai’s masterful In the Mood for Love, with 2046 on the way next week. If it’s double-bills you’re after, though, this week gives you Mother to go with Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host – a perfect follow-up to catching Parasite in the cinema.
And there’s still time to sample MUBI’s curated awards winners of years gone by, with Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida and the harrowing Son of Saul completing a line-up that ranges from Capturing the Friedmans to Death Becomes Her.
Looking for something on the big screen? Use MUBI Go (which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers) to see Mr Jones 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
Awards: Ida – 8th February
Pawel Pawlikowski’s impressively directed and deeply moving drama about a young novice in a 1960s Polish commune is anchored by a pair of terrific performances
Awards: Son of Saul – 9th February
A harrowing masterpiece that brings to life the vivid horror of the Holocaust.
Godard: Détective – 10th February
Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, lean on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up a considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place there years before.
Bong Joon-ho: Mother – 11th February
Bong Joon-ho’s fourth feature film is a gripping study of the limits of maternal devotion. The film follows a widow (Kim Hye-ja) raising her mentally challenged son (Won Bin) in a small South Korean town, who finds her world plunged into nightmare, when a young girl is found murdered and her son the prime suspect. Betrayed by the legal system, the mother takes the law into her own hands to clear his name.
Bergman: Winter Light – 12th February
Small-town pastor Tomas performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation, including his stubbornly devoted lover, Märta. When he is asked to assuage a troubled parishioner’s fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own doubt.
The Plagiarists – 13th February
When a young white couple’s car breaks down, they’re helped by an older Black man who inspires them with creative wisdom. When they discover months later that the words he spoke might not be his own, they’re horrified, fixating on his “crime” while forced to confront the originality of their lives.
Wong Kar-Wai: In The Mood For Love – 14th February
In the sleepy, proper Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite — until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them…
Other new releases on MUBI
Awards: On Body and Soul
When a man and woman who meet at work begin to know each other, they discover that they have the same dreams at night, and they decide to make them come true. Subtly moving and brutally raw.
Awards: Anna Karenina
In Imperial Russia, Anna, the wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets the charming cavalry officer Vronsky to whom she is immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation. Kiera Knightley stars in Joe Wright’s arch, lavish adaptation of the Tolstoy classic.
Awards: Missing
After civil war breaks out and martial law is imposed by the military government of a South American country, American journalist Charles Horman is taken away by soldiers. His desperate wife and father are left to attempt to find out what has happened to him, with no help from embassy officials.
Awards: Death Becomes Her
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.
Awards: Pillow Talk
Who can resist the delightful silver screen chemistry of Rock Hudson and Doris Day? A charming romance is created around the anonymity of a phone conversation in this first collaboration of the duo, a perfectly timed comedy-of-errors and winner of an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Bong Joon-ho: The Host
Bong Joon-ho’s barnstorming yet highly original monster movie follows an eccentric family’s attempts to rescue the daughter snatched by a huge amphibious creature.
A Family Submerged
Marcela’s world becomes strange after her sister dies. While she grieves, Marcela also purges her sister’s flat. When a friend of her daughter’s offers to help, she finds unexpected comfort, and their relationship deepens. During these confusing days, Marcela’s past and present become intertwined.
Godard: Made in USA
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.
Godard: First Name Carmen
Carmen X, the female member of a terrorist gang, asks her uncle Jean if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends. In reality, her clan is planning on robbing a bank. During the burglary, Carmen falls in love with a security guard and will attempt to escape with him…
Baden Baden
After a failed attempt at working on a film set, Ana, 26, returns to Strasbourg. Over the summer that follows, she decides to replace her grandmother’s bathtub with a walk-in shower, harvest plums, lose her driver’s license, and get back with her ex. In short, Ana tries to get her life together. With echoes of Frances Ha, this drama is a mundane but vibrant coming-of-age tale.
Ether
A story of a military medical doctor experimenting with science at the beginning of the 20th century in order to get power over other people
Rear Window
James Stewart plays a professional photographer confined to his Greenwich Village apartment after breaking his leg. He looks in on the intimate dramas at play in his neighbours’ apartments and, eventually, he becomes convinced that a salesman murdered his nagging wife. Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal thriller is a masterclass in suspense, claustrophobia and perspective.
Number 37
With Hitchcock’s Rear Window on MUBI, don’t miss the chance to catch this gritty South African remake. Randall is a low level criminal recently crippled in an illicit deal gone wrong. Randall, wheelchair-bound in his apartment in Cape Town, is heavily indebted to a loan shark. The gift of a pair of binoculars gives him an opportunity to get the money he so desperately needs, but at great risk.
Rotterdam: The Beast in the Jungle
Weatherend House, 1903: John and May circle each other. She says they met, some 11 years ago. His voice-over describes his sense of being predestined for something, a premonition about ‘the beast in the jungle’ striking. What is it though? Love? Death?
Rotterdam: Mute Fire
In 1906, four men were executed for attempting to assassinate Colombia’s president. Years later, director Federico Atehortúa Arteaga discovers the strange and improbable relationship between the failed assassination, his mother, and the origins of cinema in Colombia: a long history of violence.
Bergman: The Devil’s Eye
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.
Rotterdam: Maggie
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.
MyFFF: To the Ends of the World
Indochina, 1945. Young French soldier Robert Tassen is the only survivor of a massacre in which his brother has perished. Blinded by revenge, Robert rejoins the forces in search of the assassins. But meeting the young Indochinese Maï will change his beliefs and disrupt his mission.
The Spoilers
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
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.
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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
Pierrot Le Fou
Available until end of: 8th February
The Beguiled (1971)
Available until end of: 9th February
Dazed and Confused
Available until end of: 10th February
Imitation of Life
Available until end of: 11th February
Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District
Available until end of: 12th February
Smiles of a Summer Night
Available until end of: 13th February
Capturing the Friedmans
Available until end of: 14th February
To the Wonder
Available until end of: 15th February
Clockers
Available until end of: 16th February