David Farnor | On 16, Jun 2018

MUBI gets its experimental on this week, with a double-bill devoted to German director Heinz Emigholz. Only MUBI could then follow that up with not only a provocative piece of Denis Villeneuve filmmaking, but also a throwback to 1950s sci-fi with classic genre entry The Blob.

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

 

This week on MUBI

The Homesman – 16th June

Tommy Lee Jones’ revisionist Western considers women’s plight on the frontier, with a cast including Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep and James Spader. It followw Mary Bee, who, in the 1850s mid-West, is designated by church members to take 3 women who have lost their minds to a safe haven in Iowa. On the way, she saves the life of outlaw Briggs, a claim-jumper. He helps her in her mission, through perilous encounters and the harshness of the Frontier territory.

Streetscapes [Dialogue] – 18th June

MUBI kicks off a double-bill of Heinz Emigholz’s work. A film director confides in his interlocutor. He talks about the working process, about creative blocks, about artistic crises and expressive forces. At some point, the idea takes hold that this conversation could be turned into a film. And this is the very film we’re watching the two of them in.

Dieste [Uruguay] – 19th June

MUBI concludes its Heinz Emigholz double-bill with a cinematic documentation of 29 buildings by the Uruguayan architect and shell-construction master Eladio Dieste (1917-2000). The film was shot in November 2015 in Uruguay and Spain. As prologue, three constructions by Julio Vilamajó (1894-1948).

Polytechnique – 20th June

Denis Villeneuve’s dramatisation of the Montreal Massacre of 1989, where several female engineering students were murdered by an unstable misogynist.

Ouroboros – 21st June

An homage to the Gaza Strip, Ouroboros follows a man through five different landscapes, upending mass-mediated representation of trauma. A journey outside of time, marking the end as the beginning, exploring the subject of the eternal return and how we move forward when all is lost.

A Burning Hot Summer – 22nd June

That Summer recounts the torments of a painter whose actress wife has left him. It begins on a hot summer’s night, as a sports car crashes headlong into a tree. Philippe Garrel’s pseudo-remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris with Monica Bellucci in the Brigitte Bardot role.

The Blob – 23rd June

One of the great cult classics, The Blob melds ’50s schlock sci-fi and teen delinquency pics even as it transcends these genres with strong performances and ingenious special effects. The result helped launch the careers of superstud Steve McQueen and composer Burt Bacharach.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Trouble Every Day

Claire Denis turns her inimitable eye to the vampire genre, with this 2001 horror starring Vincent Gallo. It follows Shane and June Brown, an American couple honeymooning in Paris in an effort to nurture their new life together, a life complicated by Shane’s mysterious and frequent visits to a medical clinic where cutting edge studies of the human libido are undertaken

Rumble Fish

Dennis Hopper, Mickey Rourke and Matt Dillon star in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 drama about Rusty James, an up-and-coming street hoodlum, who laments the old school days of the gangs when his older brother, The Motorcycle Boy, ran things as President of the Packers.

2+2

Thomas Ciulei’s 2014 film explores the unfortunate adventures of two good friends, Oscar and Tony, living in an imaginary country, Miranda, a bankrupt dictatorship. Oscar, a famous actor and Tony, director, have had enough and want to flee the country.

Bickels

This 2016 documentary comprises a tour of 23 buildings located in Israel designed by Kibbutz architect Samuel Bickels. The majority of public spaces are directed towards the needs of different kibuttzim, constructed between 1942 and 1973, representing the ideas of the socialist communities of the time.

Casa Roshell

Music plays, drinks are served and the last boundaries are suspended: those between man and woman, gay, straight and bi, past and present, reality and fiction. The people chatting at the tables or waiting before the darkroom are shot to resemble characters from a film, impossibly glamorous, which doesn’t mean their stories aren’t true.

Body Double

One of the most divisive auteurs out there, Brian De Palma’s style, tone and subject matter are perfectly encapsulated in Body Double, his 1984 thriller about a young actor’s obsessive spying on a beautiful woman in his neighbourhood. Irreverent and reverential, this sexy, stylish, twisted ode to Hitchcock De Palma at full throttle.

Raising Cain

When Jenny’s husband, a respected psychologist, takes a year off to help raise their daughter, she is totally unprepared for the emergence of his multiple personalities and of their fiendish plot to recreate the infamous experiments of his deranged father.

Hotel Salvation

Dayanand, 77, sees his coming death in a dream and insists that his business-minded son take him to die in a special hotel in the holy city of Varanasi to attain Salvation. Rajiv, although thoroughly inconvenienced by his father’s untimely demand, is left with no choice but to embark on this journey

The Glass Key

During the campaign for reelection, the crooked politician Paul Madvig decides to clean up his past, refusing the support of the gangster Nick Varna and associating to the respectable reformist politician Ralph Henry.

The Social Network

There has never been a more relevant time to re-watch David Fincher’s masterpiece, which charts the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). Read our full review

Another Country

An in-depth look into the traditions and struggles of the Australian indigenous community Ramingining, as told by the great David Gulpilil (Walkabout). Another Country is at once exuberant yet mournful: a documentary paean that doubles as an act of resistance in the face of colonial modernity.

Il Grido

In a rare male melodrama, a mechanic facing the end of an affair with a married woman wanders across the Italian countryside from the arms of one woman to another looking for satisfaction. Antonioni connects Italian neorealism with the director’s famous works of the 1960s.

Waste Land

Lives are transformed when international art star Vik Muniz collaborates with garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro.

The Burning Hell

Never intended for general exhibition, this evangelical outreach film was made to depict, in the most vivid cinematic terms, where non-believers and sinners shall go lest they be saved. Based on the sermons of a Southern Baptist preacher and directed by notorious exploitation filmmaker Ron Ormond, Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR rescued the film after its original 16mm negatives were destroyed in a flood in 2010.

Behind the Candelabra

Michael Douglas shines in this laugh-out-loud but warm comedy about Liberace, with Matt Damon equally impressive as young assistant, Scott Thorson. With cinematography and direction by Steven Soderbergh, music by the late Marvin Hamlisch and small roles for Dan Aykroyd and Debbie Reynolds, Behind the Candelabra premiered on HBO – but it is very much an A-List movie. Rob Lowe as a plastic surgeon, meanwhile, waltzes away with the whole show. Read our full review

Two Friends

Philippe Garrel’s son Louis picks up the camera for this, his debut feature as a writer-director. It follows Clément, a film extra who is madly in love with Mona, a salesgirl in a sandwich bar. Mona has a secret that makes her elusive. When Clément is desperate to win her heart, Abel, his best and only friend, comes to the rescue. The two friends set off in the adventure of conquering her.

The Lady Without Camelias

A small movie role for shopclerk Clara (Lucia Bosé) develops into a full-blown career as a screen siren. Tension erupts when her husband can no longer tolerate watching her frivolous cinema escapades, and pushes her into a “serious, artistic” production of the life of Joan of Arc.

Away We Go

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph play a happy young couple who decide to go on a journey across the United States to find the perfect place for them to settle down and raise their child in Sam Mendes’ endearing, funny, sincere gem. Read our full review.

Lek and the Dogs

In his adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s play Ivan and the Dogs, experimental filmmaker Andrew Kötting travels to the Chilean desert to recreate the life of the young boy who left his Moscow apartment to live with a pack of wild dogs.

New Jerusalem

An Evangelical Christian and a vet returning from Afghanistan work together at a tire shop. With little to do during their empty days, they dance around their inner conflicts and cultural differences.

The Inertia Variations

The man behind the legendary British band The The attempts to challenge the contemporary political landscape through his own 12-hour live, shortwave radio broadcast. But is he really done with making music? A request to write a new song for the show reveals old demons of inertia and bereavement.

The Aviator’s Wife

Based on the saying “It’s impossible to think of nothing”, Eric Rohmer’s droll detective story reveals what happens when doubts mix with romance, and the magic that can be created by imagination.

 

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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

The Ballad of Narayama
Available until end of: 16th June

Behind the Candelabra
Available until end of: 17th June

Stand By Me
Available until end of: 18th June

Imitation of Life
Available until end of: 19th June

Come to Me, Paradise
Available until end of: 20th June

New Jerusalem
Available until end of: 21st June

The Comedy
Available until end of: 22nd June

Broken Flowers
Available until end of: 23rd June

Two Friends
Available until end of: 24th June

The Social Network
Available until end of: 25th June

 

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