David Farnor | On 30, Jun 2018

MUBI has an impressive July lined up, with an Ang Lee triple-bill on the way, a double shot of David Cronenberg and a taste of the new cinema coming out of Canada. The month kicks off, though, with the site’s ongoing quest to showcase undiscovered movies from the most prestigious film festivals, with the release of Argentine drama So Long Enthusiasm, from director Vladimir Duran.

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

 

This week on MUBI

To Rome with Love – 30th June

A flight back to Woody Allen’s unstructured era of hit-and-miss comedy, To Rome with Love’s impressive cast can’t shake the feeling of being shown a bunch of random Polaroids taken 30 years ago. Faded? Yes. But still colourful in places.

The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood – 4th July

MUBI & Nang’s focus on “filmmakers in transit” resumes with Iranian New Wave pioneer—now living in exile—Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Originally removed from circulation by the censors, this incisive, formally intrepid socio-political critique sees the light 25 years late, having lost none of its relevance.

So Long Enthusiasm – 6th July

Margarita lives with her son Axel and his older sisters Antonia, Alejandra and Alicia. Their flat is like a cosy cave where they play music, eat, sleep and argue in the warm lamplight. An intimate family cocoon.

 

Other new releases on MUBI

Mud

Ellis and his friend Neckbone are two boys who meet Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi. Skeptical but intrigued by his fantastic scenarios, they agree to help him. It isn’t long until Mud’s visions come true and their small town is besieged by bounty hunters. Jeff Nichols’ 2012 film is a remarkable, understated combination of poignant coming-of-age drama, southern gothic thrills and childlike adventure.

The Legend of the Holy Drinker

A tramp, haunted by a criminal past, is offered 200 francs by a stranger with one request, that when he can afford it, he return the sum to a chapel. The derelict rejoins a world he no longer knew, finding work, sleeping in beds or dining out with women. But he gets distracted from his obligation.

Kuro

MUBI premieres a new film of bold form and deep humanity. Romi, a Japanese woman living in Paris, works in a karaoke bar. At home in the suburbs, she tends to her paraplegic lover Milou. To pass the time she recounts to him a story alluding to a period they once spent together in Japan.

The Big Heat

Police Sergeant Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is assigned to investigate the apparent suicide of a corrupt cop, setting him on a collision course with an underworld kingpin, a cold-blooded henchman (Lee Marvin), and a gangster’s moll (Gloria Grahame) in this classic noir by Fritz Lang.

Human Desire

Carl needs the intervention of his beautiful wife Vicki to keep his job, so Vicki meets with Carl’s boss Owens, and Carl’s job is secure. Insanely jealous, Carl finds Vicki with Owens on board a train and kills Owens. Jeff, an off-duty train engineer, protects Vicki and they begin an affair.

The Blob

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 super-stud Steve McQueen and composer Burt Bacharach.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Bob and Carol Saunders attend a group therapy session at a remote cabin location. There they encounter other couples who learn to become open with their feelings and sexuality. When they return home they find that their friends Ted and Alice are too repressed.

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.

Polytechnique

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

Streetscapes [Dialogue]

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]

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).

Ouroboros

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

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.

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.

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.

The Homesman

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.

Daddy Longlegs

Long before their outstanding excursion into genre filmmaking with 2017’s Good Time, the Safdie brothers crafted this dramatic powder keg regarding a troubled father. Daddy Longlegs moves with a rare energy, perceptivity, and warmth in its complex examination of (and even tribute to) fatherhood.

 

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Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon

The Burning Hell
Available until end of: 30th June

Body Double
Available until end of: 1st July

Raising Cain
Available until end of: 2nd July

Hotel Salvation
Available until end of: 3rd July

The Glass Key
Available until end of: 4th July

The Asylum
Available until end of: 5th July

Away We Go
Available until end of: 6th July

Lek and the Dogs
Available until end of: 7th July

Trouble Every Day
Available until end of: 8th July

 

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