MUBI Update: 13 January

Happy New Year! We hope you enjoyed some great films over the holidays. We’ve put a bunch of exciting stuff up on MUBI in the meantime, and now that everyone’s back from being covered by blizzards and rainstorms, I’ll provide an update.

First and foremost, and most dangerous, is our small retrospective of German provocateur Christoph Schlingensief (for more information on the incredibly idiosyncratic and wide ranging artist, go to http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2179), who passed away last year. These remarkable and challenging films create a permanent state of insecurity by blurring borders between reality and fiction, art and offence, intention and action. The program includes his first 16mm film Für Elise (1982), Menu Total (1986), 100 Years of Adolph Hitler (1989) and 2004’s Freakstars 3000. For a primer on the auteur, we’re showing Frider Schlaich’s 2005 documentary Christoph Schlingensief and His Films for free.

Available in: The entire world!

Land of the Dead (George A. Romero, USA)

Romero needs no introduction, but perhaps what he does need is a late career reassessment. The glow of initial success with his Night of the Living Dead and subsequent early sequels and genre play seems to subsequently dimmed, but his recent career re-look and re-takes on the Dead films, including 2007’s meta-digital Diary of the Dead and 2009’s Survival of the Dead and above all this 2005 film show the auteur in as fine a form as ever. Less interested in the horror genre for the scares than for the ravaging social and political satiric potential and a no-nonsense, old school attitude towards characters thrown in situations having to get things done (namely: survive), what seems dated to the eyes of the less discerning is actually Romero making movies they should be: carefully constructed, full of character, funny, incisive, sinister and quite gory.

Available in: Switzerland

The Lone Wolf and Cub series (Japan)

Beginning with Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) this iconic and long running Japanese samurai series was based on a tremendously popular manga and both manga and film series went on to be highly influential—including the dubious honor of being not-so-cryptically remade by Sam Mendes and Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition, itself based on a graphic novel. The wolf of the title is a ronin whose previous employment was as the Shogun’s official executioner; the cub, his young son he has to cart around after his wife is killed. Suffice to say, chaos and bloodshed precede and follow their paths through the exciting series.

Available in: Belgium, France, Switzerland

The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa, Peru)

Llosa’s striking second film is about a beautiful young girl (Magaly Solier) who grows up having to protect herself from the emotional repercussions of the violence in Peru in the 1980s, and eventually has to confront the Peru she lives in today. The film deservedly took top prize at 2008’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Available in: United Kingdom

The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, UK)

Bertolucci’s sumptuous epic on the life of Emperor Pu Yi and the last days of Imperial China on took home nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Direction, Screenplay, Cinematography (legendary Vittorio Storaro), and Original Score.

Available in: Australia, New Zealand

The Meaning of Life (Don Hertzfeldt, USA)

Hertzfeldt’s award winning animation took four painstaking, hand crafted years to create, and yields an epic in miniature, condensing evolution on Earth over the course of a billion years into one magnificent short film.

Available in: The entire world!