James R | On 02, Feb 2019

MUBI begins its countdown towards the BAFTAs and Oscars this weekend, with a double-bill of masterpieces from two of this year’s nominees – Olivia Colman and Alfonso Cuaron. They’re accompanied by a spotlight on Colombian director Laura Huertas Millán and a Berlinal Film Festival retrospective. For those catching up with awards season on the big screen, meanwhile, you can use MUBI Go (which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers) to catch Can You Ever Forgive Me? 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: Tyrannosaur – 2nd February

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 – 3rd February

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

Laura Huertas Millán: Black Sun – 4th February

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 – 5th February

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.

Hong Sang-Soo: On the Beach at Night Alone – 6th February

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.

Berlinale:Hotel Dallas – 7th February

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.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Spike Lee: Inside Man

A tough detective matches wits with a cunning bank robber, as a tense hostage crisis is unfolding. Into the volatile situation comes a woman named Madeleine, a mysterious power broker who has a hidden agenda and threatens to push the situation past the breaking point. Wall Street, America and injustice collide in Spike Lee’s gripping bank heist blockbuster.

Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee’s initial masterpiece is an incendiary reckoning with American racism in the microcosmic neighbourhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, as we follow a pizza delivery boy over the course of the hottest day of the year.

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: 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.

Wim Wenders: Alice in the Cities

Phillip is a roving German reporter who, after a chance encounter with an elusive American woman, reluctantly accepts temporary custody of little Alice. Their friendship grows while traveling through various European cities on a search for the girl’s grandmother.

Wim Wenders: Kings of the Road

A roving film projector repairman saves the life of a depressed psychologist who has driven his car into a river, and they end up on the road together, traveling from one rural German movie theater to another. Along the way, the two men, each running from his past, bond over their shared loneliness.

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.

Control

With 2019 marking the 40th anniversary of Joy Division’s first album, Unknown Pleasures, go back to the band’s story with Anton Corbijn’s flawlessly composed monochrome portrait of Ian Curtis, played with intensity by Sam Riley.

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

The Blues Brothers

A pair of two-bit crooks go on a quest to save the Catholic orphanage where they were raised by reuniting their former band for a charity gig.

Hanagatami

Spring, 1941. 16-year-old Toshihiko attends school in the coastal town of Karatsu, where his aunt cares for his ailing cousin. Immersed in the seaside’s nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town’s other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war’s gravitational pull.

Hong Sang-soo: Right Now, Wrong Then

MUBI’s Hong Sang-soo retrospective continues with his wickedly conceptual comedy of melancholy and life choices. Two dueling narratives of varying possibilities, chance, and outcome, all of Hong’s storytelling gambits pay off in this Golden Leopard winner.

Hong Sang-soo: Nobody’s Daughter Haewon

Is she tired of life or love? Why else is Haewon falling asleep in a restaurant? Haewon, a student, feels abandoned. Her mother is about to emigrate to Canada and Haewon has decided to end her affair with one of her professors because he is so unsupportive…

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.

Vanderweerd: Lost Land

MUBI showcases rising Belgian documentarian Pierre-Yves Vanderweerd, who departs from staid convention to embrace the poetic and sensorial possibilities of evoking the lives of lost peoples, their outer landscapes and inner beings.

Vanderweerd: The Eternals

Vanderweerd’s latest feature beautifully, movingly captures the condition of those stranded in a conflict forgotten by most.

Charlie Wilson’s War

Written by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), Charlie Wilson’s War is a political comedy teeming with refreshing humour to confront a nigh forgotten political gamble taken amidst the cold war.

 

A monthly subscription to MUBI costs £7.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial.

 

Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

My Twentieth Century
Available until end of: 2nd February

The Loveless
Available until end of: 3rd February

Shadows
Available until end of: 4th February

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Available until end of: 4th February

Chained Girls
Available until end of: 4th February

Occidental
Available until end of: 4th February

Renzo Piano: The Architect of Light
Available until end of: 4th February

Pity
Available until end of: 4th February

Island of the Hungry Ghosts
Available until end of: 10th February

 

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