MUBI

fisgon · 06-09-2020 10:17pm

The Commune – Vinterberg - 2016
The commune of the title is in 1970s Copenhagen. It comes together in a haphazard fashion and threatens to fall apart, but not in the way you expect. An interesting view of this social experiment, though it only really explores three or four of the characters. The others are really just ciphers in the background.
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Technoboss - Nicolau - 2018
Tedious, slow, never engages. The songs are terrible and just break up what little flow there is, it just wanders. Hard to know what the point of the film is, or what it is trying to be. Sad and tired, like its protagonist.
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The brand new testament – Van Dormael - 2017
“In the beginning, God created Brussels.”
This is a joy; funny, inventive, satirical, smart – God is a bad tempered slob who never leaves his Belgian apartment. His daughter escapes his control and starts messing things up for him. The young actress who plays Ea is fabulous; tough, funny, charismatic.
Hilarious and delightful.
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Talk to her – Almodovar – 2002
One of Almodovar’s most fascinating films. The story is troubling, moving, creepy, unique; a male nurse who falls in love with his comatose patient. Benigno, the protagonist, does something unforgiveable, but is still somehow someone we can have pity for. Really beautiful at times, continues Almodovar’s obsession with the body, with illness and, strangely, with hospitals.
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Sicilia – Straub / Huillet – 1999
Weird almost-monologues, bizarre, unnatural conversations, deliberately wooden acting, silent shots of tedious, dead black and white landscapes. Says almost nothing interesting about Sicily except that it is poor. Discordant and pretentious. On the plus side, it is very short.
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sterz · 09-09-2020 9:47pm

Have they changed the layout recently? Don't see the number of days left for any of the films under 'Now showing'.

Irish Aris · 09-09-2020 10:22pm

sterz wrote: »

Have they changed the layout recently? Don't see the number of days left for any of the films under 'Now showing'.

I have never noticed it to be honest. But usually I watch through PS4 and I don't think they ever showed the remaining days there - is/was this a feature if you watch directly in their website?

Just finished watching Jaco Van Dormael's The Brand New Testament (Le Tout Nouveau Testament). Very funny (and occasionally melancholic) film, it continues a tradition of Van Dormael playing with serious issues in a funny way and this is one of his best.

fisgon · 15-09-2020 10:06pm

A couch in New York - Akerman - 1996
Starts off promisingly, but just gets silly and annoying, with senseless misunderstandings and a predictable role reversal. It has some charm, but the love story is beyond idiotic and there is no chemistry between Binoche and Hurt. The part about the dog at the end in the airport; what? Incredibly lame. (And who exactly is Dennis?)
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Matthias and Maxime – Dolan - 2019
A bit unfinished, the ending is unsatisfactory. The strength of the film is in its portrayal of friendship, specifically male friendship. The gay theme is understated and struggling to break through throughout the whole film. Characters drift in and out without really impacting on the narrative - has its charms but feels incomplete.
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3 idiots - Hirani - 2009
A bit bonkers, a lot of fun, fast, busy, a kind of Indian screwball comedy with a bit of rom-com mixed in. It also has a message about being yourself and about the pressures on Indian young people to conform to parents’ expectations - there are a lot of suicides for what is mostly a comedy. Enjoyable, if a little cliched.
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Bad Education – Almodovar – 2004
Two of the characters, near the end of the film, go to see a movie in a Film noir festival, and this is not accidental. There are a lot of twists, uncertain identities, swapping roles, doubles, dark motives, secrets. Gael Garcia Bernal’s character has at least three names at various points in the film (and does a very convincing drag queen and Spanish accent), and in fact he is the central figure in the story. A curious, compelling, intriguing watch.
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padjocollins · 16-09-2020 4:22am

sweet bean https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4298958/ . slow paced, got good ratings. I liked it.

Irish Aris · 16-09-2020 9:14am

I rewatched Talk To Her (Hable con Ella).
This is one of my favourite Almodovar films. I like it because he focuses on the male characters of the story and their feelings against the women in their lives - usually it's the other way around.
Not to say that I can relate to the psyche of the characters, mostly that I can understand their point of view.
As figson mentioned in his review a few posts above, although Benigno did a horrible thing, you can only feel sorry for him: a socially awkward human being that struggles to behave around women, and thus keeps an ambiguity around his sexuality to muddle the waters.
Marco is more approachable: A man that seems to have some kind of past (although we never find out what might be), a man that seems very level headed and in control of his feelings - and yet emotionally affected by the beauty of art (or is it because it reminds him of something in his own life?). In any case this is a must-see for all Almodovar fans - and he continues successfully with the more "serious" era of his filmography that kind of started with Live Flesh (Carne Tremula) and fully blossomed with All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre)

Matthias & Maxime
Though I was aware of Xavier Dolan, I have never watched any of the films he directed, so starting with this one.
The first thought in my mind is: how much of this is autobiographical? Dolan is openly gay so I wondered if he draws from personal experiences. There are some interesting elements in it, primarily Matthias's struggle to process the events that happened and connect them to his own feelings. Overall it was a bit uneven, there were some parts that though they are meant to release some of the pressure or explain events of that happened or will happen don't offer much in the overall story + some of the characters are a bit annoying. But there is something about Dolan's storytelling that intrigues me and I would like to see more of his films.

The Blue Flower of Novalis (A Rosa Azul De Novalis)
This is a documentary/monologue of queer poet Marcelo Diorio, as he reflects on his life and his art. Being gay myself I decided to watch it but I didn't find it interesting at all. It all felt a bit pretentious and I found myself drifting in and out of what Marcelo was talking about. There were also 2-3 very explicit gay sex scenes which I'm not sure how they connected with the whole concept of the film (but that might be because I wasn't really focused on every little detail). Something of a niche film, enter at your own risk.

fisgon · 22-09-2020 10:46pm

Apocalypse Now – Ford Coppola – 1979
Absolutely hypnotic, right from the beginning. A masterpiece; hilarious, disturbing, infuriating, profound, the battle scene in the first half is jawdropping and visceral, Martin Sheen is on the verge for the whole movie. One of the generals is called Kilgore (kill + gore), which gives you Coppola’s attitude to the war – hell and madness. Kurtz is insane, but then so is almost everyone else in the film. Horror and genius. The most extraordinary film ever made.
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Still the water – Kawase – 2014
Set on the island of Amami, there is a very strong sense of place here. The story itself didn’t really engage me – the teenage angst is a bore - though the music and cinematography are powerful. There are moments of stillness and beauty here that work.
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Home – Meier - 2008
The perils of noise pollution. This is a claustrophobic film, it never leaves the house belonging to the five members of the family at the centre of the story, and so their anxiety is also ours. They all slowly lose their minds, though in different ways. An at times disturbing examination of growing madness and an example of the cure being worse than the disease. Though, it never explains why the house has a back and no front (or a front and no back).
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Sweet bean – Kawase – 2015
Lepers. Apparently they are still a thing in Japan.
This film is beautiful at times, meditative, poetic, gentle, intense. Very Japanese, people speak in haikus, there is lots of cherry blossom. Made me want to try some dorayaki.
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McGrath5 · 29-09-2020 2:36pm

The Ground Beneath my Feet

Watched this over the weekend. Slow paced yet found it gripped me for entire run time, well recommended.

fisgon · 01-10-2020 11:05pm

Lights in the dusk - Kaurismaki – 2006
Everybody smokes and no one smiles. The stoniest of stony faces is Koistinen, the central character and a man so lacking in personality that he is more rock than human. Kaurismaki used to make deadpan but hilarious films, but it is hard to see what he is trying to do with this one; it is certainly not funny in any way. Disappointing.
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Time of the wolf – Haneke – 2003
This is basically a series of disasters, under the umbrella of a larger disaster – though we are never told what the calamity is – zombie apocalypse, pandemic, war…. This is a big weakness of the film as we have no context for what is happening. A dystopian societal breakdown without any real explanation of why is just misery porn without any wider significance. Desperate people do desperate things – this is not news. Depravity and horror without meaning.
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Volver – Almodovar – 2006
A delight and a joy. The story is like something from the tele basura that one of the characters appears on TV – sensationalist, melodramatic – but Almodovar carries it off with his wit, warmth and humour. Another Almodovar film about women – their strength, rivalry, conflicts, struggles – there is no significant male character in the whole story. This is also Penelope Cruz’s film, she is magnetic in the central role.
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Salon Kitty – Tinto Brass - 1976
The best little whorehouse in Nazi Germany.
There is a scene in the middle, involving a bread penis and a speech by Hitler projected on a wall, that is indescribable but representative of this whole bizarre, fantastic mess. Some of the acting is so terrible it is laughable, the dubbing makes it hard to watch at times and the Germans are all comedy Nazis, but it always holds your attention, maybe just to see what weird sh1t is going to happen next.
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padjocollins · 05-10-2020 8:22pm

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/heavenly-authors-discussing-the-lighthouse-with-cinematographer-maksim-drozdov. Can't say i enjoyed it but i aporeciate the unique set , script and the camera work

stockshares · 12-10-2020 11:48am

I got an email saying the Deer Hunter is now showing.

fisgon · 13-10-2020 10:29pm

The New Girlfriend – Ozon – 2014
There is a lot of stuff going on here with Claire and David - lesbian fantasies, cross dressing, gay fantasies, sexual confusion. It’s an intriguing story that runs out of steam in the final part. The ending is corny and beyond stupid –

the guy wakes up out of a coma and immediately leaves the hospital?

Claire, as a protagonist, is annoying and flaky, and lets the whole thing down.
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The ground beneath my feet – Kreutzer – 2019
The lonely world of the business consultant.
This kind of wanders to a conclusion, after a promising set up. There is one big climax, but even that is not a surprise and doesn’t change much. Intriguing for a time but doesn't follow through.
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Le Harve – Kaurismaki - 2010
Very Kaurismaki, but with a French twist. Lots of expressionless faces that are actually incredibly full of personality – the central actor Andre Wilms has a face that was made for Kaurismaki’s films.
A humane story, a story of community and compassion, with a feeling of the 1950s about it, though it is set in the 2000s.
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Buddy - Bressan - 1985
A campaigning film, which is a bit dated now as it focuses on the AIDS crisis in New York in the eighties. A bit lectur-ey at times, and the acting doesn’t always convince – this all feels like a long time ago. More like a play than a film; we only ever see the faces of the two main characters. Nice ending.
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fisgon · 22-10-2020 8:28pm

Cure - Kurosawa - 1997
Creepy, disturbing, reminiscent of Se7en at times. Hypnosis, gruesome murder, amnesia, the film has secrets that it doesn’t really reveal. Curious but a little unsatisfying, though the very end does suggest a whole other story….
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Broken embraces (abrazos rotos) – Almodovar – 2003
Another Almodovar film about filmmaking – a common theme on MUBI. All a bit meta – Penelope Cruz plays an actress who falls in love with her director, with dangerous consequences. Not as enchanting as other Almodovar films – it has its compelling, stunning moments but is a little predictable and unfinished, and doesn’t quite come together. Even so, a mediocre Almodovar is still worth watching.
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Amateur – Hartley – 1994
So much in this; accountants gone rogue, Elina Lowensohn’s lips, a very young Parker Posey, PJ Harvey and Pavement on the soundtrack, baggy suits, bobs, murder, some light torture, amnesia, a cop who can’t control her compassion, an ex-nun nymphomaniac who has never had sex, Christopher from The Sopranos. Very hard to describe or categorise, but never less than entertaining.
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The Deer Hunter – Cimino – 1978
It takes the film an hour to get to ‘Nam, and up to then it is based in this Russian Orthodox community in a steel town in Pennsylvania. The group of friends there – in their thirties – act like drunken teenagers. The transition to Vietnam is abrupt and violent, and after the return to Pennsylvania all is changed. The famous Deer Hunter theme is really insipid and doesn’t fit with the material, but the film itself is compelling, superb, powerful and masterly.
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padjocollins · 27-10-2020 7:42am

Alois nebel , chech 2011 . A little bit dark but i would recommend watching
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1374985/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Smegging hell · 01-11-2020 3:34am

I really enjoyed Cure, I look forward to watching more of Kiyoshi 'not the Seven Samurai one' Kurosawa's films.

padjocollins · 01-11-2020 10:02am

mubi are offerning a years subscription for 50 euro , offer ending tonight
https://mubi.com/ourbestdeal?lt=11ef1hk1b62u500f9qqv8lir9o9ul6q8z4wvvwz1605428244

fisgon · 01-11-2020 10:18pm

The Aviator’s wife - Rohmer - 1981
It picks up a bit when Lucie enters the story in the middle, but the two central characters; Anne and Francois, are awful – he a clingy doormat, she a self-involved nightmare. Their relationship, such as it is, makes no sense. The final, inane conversation between the couple is just annoying. Mostly bad.
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The skin I live in – Almodovar – 2013
Seems like the film jumps the shark a bit at the beginning, where all manner of craziness happens in the first thirty minutes, but it settles down and gets more intriguing and creepy. Again, Almodóvar’s obsession with the body, with surgery and hospitals, doppelgangers, physical changes. Truly disturbing at times, the central idea is a real head fcuk.
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Two/one – Cabral – 2019
Style over substance. It looks great, but the central idea is underdeveloped – these two men are somehow linked, and a lot of parallels happen in their lives, but it is hard to see the point that is being made. And the sleeping thing makes no sense,

if one can only be awake when the other is asleep, they each have to sleep 12 hours a day! Also, how did the pregnancy happen?

It had promise, but did not fully deliver.
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L’Avenir / Things to come – Hansen Love – 2016
Like so many French films, this one just drifts to a conclusion. On the way it looks at themes of desire, aging, how to live a good life. It is gentle and slow and has its charms, but they are limited.
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The other lamb – Szumowska - 2019
Fascinating and atmospheric. Elements of The Handmaid’s Tale, Big Love. The visions and hallucinations begin to get annoying as the film goes on, but they do add to a sense of foreboding and dread. Shepherd is an obvious tyrant and villain, so there is no real suspense in the plot, but he could be seen as a representative of the patriarchy. Still, this is more creepy and powerful than a feminist parable. Hypnotic.
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safetyboy · 02-11-2020 4:31am

cant find the app on my xbox, or amazon firestick

strawdog · 02-11-2020 12:07pm

padjocollins wrote: »

mubi are offerning a years subscription for 50 euro , offer ending tonight
https://mubi.com/ourbestdeal?lt=11ef1hk1b62u500f9qqv8lir9o9ul6q8z4wvvwz1605428244

Cheers for posting that. Deal still seems active today. Had already been considering joining for a while given the awful standard of movie available on other platforms but this has tipped the balance for me.

padjocollins · 02-11-2020 4:34pm

mubi offer ends midnight tonight

Fuascailteoir · 02-11-2020 4:38pm

padjocollins wrote: »

mubi offer ends midnight tonight

I previous years the black friday sale event had a year long subscription at around 35 euro. No guarantee it will happen again of course

padjocollins · 02-11-2020 8:19pm

Fuascailteoir wrote: »

I previous years the black friday sale event had a year long subscription at around 35 euro. No guarantee it will happen again of course

I used to have that subscription and then it slowly went up over the years until it was 95 euros. that's a bit stiff when you compare it to 35 . would be great if a black friday deal for 35 euros came out . thing is they probably will try and jump the price the next year of subscription. if you cancel the subscription they will likely offer you the price you paid the first year

camz09 · 02-11-2020 8:40pm

I got one year subscription after availing the add-on from my Scribd free trial ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

fisgon · 11-11-2020 11:37pm

The Falling – 2014 – Morley
Mass hysteria, fainting fits, incest, teenage pregnancy; the film is charming and enthralling at first and slowly loses its way, just as Lydia (Masie Williams) loses control. There is some commentary here about how women were treated by psychiatrists, but even this gets lost. Wasted potential.
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Beautiful New Bay Area Project – Kurosawa –
Hard to see the point of this; a lot of random stuff for half an hour, gratuitous fight scenes near the end, a young boss of a company who is a complete tool, hints at secrets and other mysteries but nothing developed, just a bunch of stuff that happens, pointlessly. Two and a half stars – one and a half for the kick-ass Takako who takes out four or five guys just to get back something she wants.
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Ghost strata – Rivers – 2019
Just random stuff. Some of it semi-interesting, most of it flat and self-indulgent. Geology, The Rake’s Progress, Ancient Greece, old teeth, a bit of this, a bit of that. Something you might watch five minutes of in a modern art gallery before moving on. There is a claim of some kind of theme – about the passage of time – but this is largely empty; the film is just some random images looking for a structure. Mostly mind-murderingly tedious.
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Pauline at the beach - Rohmer - 1982
A film full of summer – Normandy in July. Six or seven characters, in their teens, twenties, thirties, in bathing suits, on the beach, hooking up, splitting up, growing up. Not a very likable bunch – Pierre is whiny and jealous, and blond Marion is weirdly intent on pimping out her fifteen year old cousin Pauline to her thirty year old ex. And there is manipulative, creepy Henri. Lots of tedious, intense talk about L’Amour.
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What we do in the shadows – Waititi/Clement - 2014
“We’re werewolves, not swearwolves.”
A Kiwi vampire mockumentary, what’s not to like? Mostly wryly amusing, though there are some hilarious moments too. Written by NZ comedy royalty Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement, and Murray from Flight of the Conchords shows up as a werewolf. Impossible not to like.
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Rjd2 · 20-11-2020 7:25pm

No Fisgon reviews this week:(

Anyway watched So Long My Son the other night.

It spans three decades so plenty of commentary on China's one child policy, economics etc...We are introduced to two couples who each have a child who are born on the same day as other. One child drowns in a swimming incident and then over next few decades we follow both as they deal with the fall out.

It sounds grim and the three hour running length may put people off , but its very moving, accessible and much more uplifting than the premise suggests.

The five star reviews all round very deserved.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/so_long_my_son

fisgon · 21-11-2020 3:50pm

Rjd2 wrote: »

No Fisgon reviews this week:(

Anyway watched So Long My Son the other night.

It spans three decades so plenty of commentary on China's one child policy, economics etc...We are introduced to two couples who each have a child who are born on the same day as other. One child drowns in a swimming incident and then over next few decades we follow both as they deal with the fall out.

It sounds grim and the three hour running length may put people off , but its very moving, accessible and much more uplifting than the premise suggests.

The five star reviews all round very deserved.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/so_long_my_son

Thanks. Started watching this a while ago, it seemed heavy, a tough watch, realized that it was three hours long and decided to give it a miss. There is just too much else to watch....

Maybe I'll check it out again.

fisgon · 21-11-2020 3:54pm

Rjd2 wrote: »

No Fisgon reviews this week:(

Oh yes there is.....

I’m so excited (Amores pasajeros) – Almodovar – 2014
Bit of a mess with some absurd elements that are just silly, but being a film by Almodóvar it is never anything less than entertaining. A lot of the plot makes no sense, but that is irrelevant – Pedro is just having some fun. Bawdy and hilarious. (The Spanish title is actually much cleverer than the translation - it is a play on words, meaning both "Love among the passengers" and "Fleeting loves").
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Meeks Cutoff – Reich – 2014
A lot of shots of tiny people and wagons in an immense landscape – it is the 1800s and the settlers, going west into virgin territory, are at the mercy of the environment. The atmosphere is oppressive, at times, which makes this sometimes difficult to watch. It doesn’t so much end as just stop, unsatisfactorily.
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You, the living - Andersson - 2007
Lots of grey people in drab settings in badly fitting clothes – or maybe that’s just the 2000s &#55357;&#56841; The film starts off promisingly enough, but the weight of these endless scenes where almost nothing happens drags it down. Randomness mixed with surrealism, with no real structure or direction. Mostly an irritating waste of time.
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Queen of Hearts – El Touky – 2019
A harrowing, upsetting story that is difficult to rate. Unusual to have a central character who is also the villain – Anne is borderline sociopathic, going through her mid-life crisis and doing something unforgiveable in the process. The key to her character is the two opposing sides – she is a campaigner for justice while also being a perpetrator. Powerful and disturbing, and very interesting to have a woman as the villain.
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The Kindergarten Teacher - Colangelo - 2018
Maggie Gyllenhaal in the title role is creepy as fcuk, in fact her creepiness, delusion and inappropriateness is so extreme that it is hard to take the character seriously. And this makes this film difficult to take seriously too; it is not possible to identify with someone so deranged. The whole poetry thing is impossible to believe too, especially from a 5 year old. Stretches credulity. Irritating. Wanted to like it. Could not.
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Rjd2 · 22-11-2020 7:19am

fisgon wrote: »

Thanks. Started watching this a while ago, it seemed heavy, a tough watch, realized that it was three hours long and decided to give it a miss. There is just too much else to watch....

Maybe I'll check it out again.

On paper its not the most appealing.

3 hours and opens with a child dying in a swimming incident.:eek:

Its actually uplifting in places and much more accessible than many "critical darling" online.

[Deleted User] · 22-11-2020 12:01pm

Watched Images last week which is a surreal watch. Filmed in Wicklow and by Altman, reminded me of some of DePalma's 70s stuff but more lacking in plot. It was a pretty great watch and you can see the influence of European Cinema, if you're a fan of Bergman's Persona you'll love it as it's heavily influenced by it. I don't think it was at that level of thought provoking and served to be an innovative horror more so than being at Bergman's level. Would recommend though as it's a great watch.

fisgon · 28-11-2020 12:41am

Deleted User wrote: »

Watched Images last week which is a surreal watch. Filmed in Wicklow and by Altman, reminded me of some of DePalma's 70s stuff but more lacking in plot. It was a pretty great watch and you can see the influence of European Cinema, if you're a fan of Bergman's Persona you'll love it as it's heavily influenced by it. I don't think it was at that level of thought provoking and served to be an innovative horror more so than being at Bergman's level. Would recommend though as it's a great watch.

Didn't know it was filmed in Wicklow, though just having watched it, that makes sense. Wonder why the cars are all left hand drive, as if it is supposed to be America.

It had its moments, but for me it didn't really work. Her descent into insanity felt a little random....

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