David Farnor | On 16, Feb 2019

With only a week until the Oscars, MUBI is getting into the awards season spirit with a weekend double-bill of Winter’s Bone and Foxcatcher. And, if you want to see an award-worth performance on the big screen, you can use MUBI Go (which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers) to see A Private War 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 2019: Winter’s Bone – 16th February

Jennifer Lawrence delivers a star-making performance in this mystery, which sees a determined Ozark Mountain girl go on a dangerous search for her drug-dealing father, who has skipped bail. Cold and bleak, with a cracking supporting turn from John Hawkes, this is a frostbitten pleasure.

Awards 2019: Foxcatcher – 17th February

Channing Tatum delivers a knock-out performance as real life wrestler Mark Schultz, who is taken under the wing of Steve Carrell’s eccentric millionaire, John du Pont. Supported by Mark Ruffalo as Mark’s generous older brather, director Bennett Miller captures the shifting power balance of the trio with a chilling detachment.

Hong Sang-soo: The Day After – 18th February

Areum is looking forward to her first day of work at a small publishing house, unaware that she’s replacing the boss’s lover who recently left him. She is therefore caught off-guard when the boss’s wife causes a scene in the belief that Areum was to be the recipient of a love letter.

Wim Wenders: Tokyo-Ga – 19th February

German director Wim Wenders travels to Japan to explore the world of one his “masters” in cinema, Japanese celebrated film director Yasujiro Ozu. Sequences of Wenders’ view of Japan alternates with encounters and interviews with crew and cast-members of Ozu’s films.

Awards 2019: The Virgin Spring – 20th February

Christians Töre and Märeta send their daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter Ingeri, to deliver candles to a church. On the way, the girls meet three goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin. When the killers seek refuge in their family’s farm, Töre plots a fitting revenge.

Awards 2019: Beasts of the Southern Wild – 21st February

Magical realism writ large, Beasts of the Southern is a gorgeous, sad depiction of a child’s view of the world, featuring a star-making turn from Quvenzhané Wallis.

A Foreign Affair – 22nd February

Congresswoman Phoebe Frost travels to postwar Berlin to investigate reports that an American officer may be protecting cabaret singer Erika von Schlütow, the former mistress of a leading Nazi. Miss Frost falls for her military escort Captain Pringle, unaware that he is in fact the singer’s paramour.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Awards 2019: Tyrannosaur

Olivia Colman deserved all the awards for her heartbreaking turn in Paddy Considine’s powerful, intense drama about domestic abuse, co-starring an excellent (and entirely loathsome) Eddie Marsan. Read our full review

Awards 2019: Children of Men

Alfonso Cuaron’s remarkable dystopian sci-fi, starring Clive Owen, only feels more relevant 12 years after it was released. Read our full review

Awards 2019: Fish Tank

This 2009 film sees 15 year old Mia get a little too close to her mum’s boyfriend (Michael Fassbender). Shot in an apartment block with a raw immediacy, it won the Jury Prize at Cannes – announcing Andrea Arnold as one of Britain’s most exciting filmmakers. A free-wheeling, intimate drama that captures the claustrophobia of council flat living, and (like many of Arnold’s films) captures the rolling Essex landscape with the shadow and colour of a Constable painting. Superb.

Berlinale: Hotel Dallas

1980s Romania. The TV show Dallas becomes a huge hit and inspires a young woman to immigrate to America. Playfully mixing fiction and documentary, Hotel Dallas is a surreal parable of communism, capitalism, and the power of art.

Berlinale: Brothers of the Night

Soft boys by day, kings by night. The film follows young Bulgarian Roma who come to Vienna looking for freedom and a quick buck. They sell their bodies as if that’s all they had. What comforts them, so far from home, is the feeling of being together. But the nights are long and unpredictable.

Berlinale: Victory Day

Every year, on the 9th of May, people gather in Treptower Park in Berlin. They come dressed in their best outfits or in Soviet military uniform. They carry flags, banners and posters, they sing, dance and drink. They celebrate the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany.

Berlinale: Pendular

A couple composed of a male sculptor and a female dancer split their empty loft with a strip of orange tape to mark their respective working space, a divide which changes the nature of their relationship. Gradually the young artists’ works bleed together and inspire one another.

Submarine

Richard Ayoade’s gently hilarious coming-of-age story is quality naval gazing cinema.

Central Airport THF

From its storied history glorified by the Nazis and enshrined for its role in the Berlin Airlift, Berlin’s Tempelhof is probably the world’s most famous airport. Karim Aïnouz’s striking documentary explores the essential role it has today, housing refugees in its astounding, repurposed architecture.

Laura Huertas Millán: Black Sun

Like the black sun of an eclipse, Antonia is a lyrical singer of exuberant and dark beauty. Recovering from a suicide attempt in a rehabilitation institution, all her family ties are irreparably broken. But her sister remains deeply affected by what happened. May they reunite once again? MUBI kicks off a triple-bill dedicated to Laura Huertas Millán with this 2016 short documentary.

Laura Huertas Millán: La Libertad

MUBI continues its run of Laura Huertas Millán short docs, as matriarchs assemble around a backstrap loom, a pre-Hispanic technique preserved by indigenous women of Mesoamerica. Unfolding like a weaving of figures and the gestures making up this labor, the film circulates between a domestic space, an archaeological museum, and a weavers’ cooperative.

MyFFF: Keep an Eye Out

MUBI begins a trio of titles from this year’s My French Film Festival with Quentin Dupieux’s absurd new comedy. Keep an Eye Out places asinine slapstick and ingenuous dialogue in the ripe confines of a police interrogation to chaotic, hilarious and cathartic effect.

MyFFF: Let the Girls Play

The true, kick-ass story of the first female football team in France, this comedy puts the macho alpha males of the late 60s back in their place, and scores with every joke.

MyFFF: Black Tide

Dany, the Arnault family’s teenage son, has disappeared. The case is assigned to François Visconti, a world-weary and disillusioned detective. He sets out to find the missing teenager while he is reluctant to take care of his own son, Denis, 16, who seems to be mixed up in drug trafficking. Erick Zonca returns with a fiercely dark and twisting thriller, led by an unforgettably volatile Vincent Cassel.

Wim Wenders: Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother in Los Angeles, and his missing wife.

Wim Wenders: The American Friend

Jonathan Zimmerman, a picture framer who suffers from a fatal disease, crosses paths with Tom Ripley, who trafficks in forged artworks. Drawn into an underworld of shady gangsters, Zimmerman is tempted to commit murder for a sum of money that would ensure the welfare of his family after his death.

byNWR: Satan in High Heels

This 1962 exploitation pic stars Meg Myles as Stacey Kane, a voluptuous burlesque dancer who robs her drug-addicted husband, then skips town and heads for the Big Apple, where she finds work at a high-end strip club.

“The film was the project of some of the main purveyors of underground S&M and fetish art of the time, including producer Leonard Burtman. Discovered in a closed film lab, the original 35mm negative underwent hours of painstaking repairs to picture & soundtrack, which had begun to deteriorate.” –NWR

Les Unwanted de Europa

MUBI handpicks some favourites from last year’s Rotterdam Film Festival, with Fabrzia Ferraro’s 2018 road movie delving into the meaning of exile by confronting human vulnerability with the immensity of landscape.

Hong Sang-soo: Claire’s Camera

Film sales assistant Man-hee is working in Cannes but is abruptly fired halfway through the festival. Now unmoored, she strikes up a friendship with Claire, a French teacher and first-time visitor to the festival. By chance, Claire also becomes friends with Man-hee’s boss and Korean filmmaker So.

Hong Sang-Soo: On the Beach at Night Alone

Young-hee visits a friend in Hamburg to nurse a broken heart with all the enthusiasm of the romantic drifter abroad. Meanwhile, back in Gangneung and with the soju flowing, Young-hee questions the social attitudes that have punished her relationship with a married film director.

Hong Sang-soo: Yourself and Yours

Painter Youngsoo hears secondhand that his girlfriend, Minjung, has recently had (many) drinks with an unknown man. This leads to a quarrel that seems to end their relationship. The next day, he sets out in search of her, at the same time that Minjung has a series of encounters with strange men.

 

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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

The Blues Brothers
Available until end of: 16th February

Keep an Eye Out
Available until end of: 17th February

Let the Girls Play
Available until end of: 18th February

Right Now, Wrong Then
Available until end of: 19th February

Kings of the Road
Available until end of: 20th February

Control
Available until end of: 21st February

Hanagatami
Available until end of: 22nd February

Do the Right Things
Available until end of: 23rd February

Inside Man
Available until end of: 24th February

 

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