David Farnor | On 02, Jun 2018

MUBI celebrates the controversial, inimitable Brian De Palma this weekend with a double-bill of psychological thrillers – and follows it up with an exploitation chase, as Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR debuts its latest restoration project. If all of that doesn’t appeal, though, you’ll be rewarded at the end of the week with the arrival of Sam Mendes’ gloriously heartfelt gem, Away We Go.

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

 

This week on MUBI

Body Double – 2nd June

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 – 3rd June

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 – 4th June

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 – 5th June

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.

Away We Go – 7th June

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.

Lek and the Dogs – 8th June

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.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

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.

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.

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.

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

Stand by Me

Rob Reiner’s take on Stephen King’s The Body, which sees four boys seeking adventure in the woods while looking for a missing teenager’s dead body, is nothing less than a masterpiece.

Imitation of Life

MUBI’s Douglas Sirk retrospective concludes with the director’s last movie in Hollywood, and last commercial picture — a coldly brilliant weepie, a tale of two intertwined families in which the materialist optimism is continually counterpointed by an emphasis upon racist tension and the degeneration of family bonds.

Come to Me, Paradise

In this sci-fi documentary, a drone spirit is summoned to the heart of Hong Kong where Filipina migrant workers gather and make public space their own.

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 Comedy

Indifferent even to the prospects of inheriting his father’s estate, Swanson, a desensitized, ageing Brooklyn hipster, strays into a series of reckless situations that may offer the promise of redemption or the threat of retribution.

Broken Flowers

Jim Jarmusch’s bittersweet comedy-drama sees an old man revisit his former lovers after an anonymous letter tells him he has a son. Released in 2005, it formed a double-bill with Lost in Translation that introduced a more melancholic, understated side to Bill Murray.

Cannes Classics: The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki is a portrait of real life Finnish boxer Olli Maki, which won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes 2016. That should give you a hint that this isn’t your usual boxing movie – and not just because it’s in Finnish and black-and-white. Jarkko Lahti is fantastic as the fighter, his face channeling both optimism and failure, while director Juho Kuosman shoots in monochrome 16mm, giving everything the feel of a newsreel. Laugh-out-loud funny and shot through with the romance of defeat, this is truly knock-out stuff. Read our full review.

Cannes Classics: Lost River

Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut follows Billy, a single mother of two, who is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld in a vanishing city, while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery if their family is to survive. Read our full review/

Cannes Classics: The Bridges of Sarajevo

Exclusive to MUBI’s Cannes Takeover is this ambitious, talent-stacked omnibus exploration of Sarajevo. With diverse contributors including Godard, MUBI retrospective subject Angela Schanelec, and Romanian New Wave luminary Cristi Puiu, its diversity stands testament to the fierce history of the city.

Cannes Classics: Refugiado

Matias and his mother Laura, find themselves forced to hurriedly abandon the house they live in to escape another outburst of violence from Fabian. Matias is 8 and Laura is newly pregnant. Thus they begin a wandering journey in search of a place they can feel safe and protected.

Cannes Classics: Slack Bay

Northern France, 1910. The bourgeois Van Peteghem family return to their towering mansion above ‘Slack Bay’ every summer. An unlikely romance blossoms between the mischievous Bille Van Peteghem and local mussel-gatherer, ‘Ma Loute’. Meanwhile, a series of mysterious disappearances are taking place. Read our full review.

Cannes Classics: The Other Side

Disarmed veterans, taciturn adolescents or drug addicts live in an invisible territory at the margins of society, at the border between anarchy and illegality, trying to respond to a threat: of being forgotten by political institutions and having their rights as citizens trampled.

Cannes Classics: Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Whether seen as an exacting character portrait or one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.

Cannes Classics: The Ballad of Narayama

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, Shohei Imamura explores the role of tradition and legacy across generations in an impoverished 19-century mountain village in this pastoral drama evoking the dark side of folklore.

 

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

 

Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

The Dreamed Path
Available until end of: 2nd June

Closer
Available until end of: 3rd June

Touch of Evil
Available until end of: 4th June

The Tarnished Angels
Available until end of: 5th June

The Other Side
Available until end of: 6th June

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
Available until end of: 7th June

Behind My Grandfather Allende
Available until end of: 8th June

Slack Bay
Available until end of: 9th June

Lost River
Available until end of: 10th June

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki
Available until end of: 11th June

A Time to Love and a Time to Die
Available until end of: 12th June

 

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