More of MUBI

Except for special tastes, MUBI is overpriced at $15 per month, but frequently offers specials, and through Amazon Prime I just got a two-month subscription for $4.  I had only one must-see film of theirs on my list, but encountered little trouble finding others.  The channel is a worthy haven for the offbeat, but only worth the occasional month’s subscription.  Here I return for a follow up to my last go-round.

Eephus (MC-83) is a baseball film like no other.  I’m not sure how someone who has not “been there, done that” will respond to this film, but as one who played sandlot ball in a small Massachusetts town around 1990, this resonated for me on a profound level.  You can also approach Carson Lund’s film as an idiosyncratic indie with a bunch of unknown faces, but two hilarious cameos, Frederick Wiseman and “Spaceman” Bill Lee.  Most of the humor is deadpan but occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.  Like most beer league baseball, it’s slow and pointless, as a mixed bag of players congregate for mysterious (to outsiders) rituals of male bonding.  The game comes as a last call for many, as their ballfield is being torn down after this picturesque October day, to make way for a new school.  Their unwillingness to let the game end turns ridiculous but poignant.  The baseball itself is not actually believable, but perhaps the players’ ineptitude is.
 
The pairing of Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal was enough to make me overlook the indifferent Metacritic rating of The History of Sound (MC-63), and this film by Oliver Hermanus turned out much better than expected.  Maybe there’s more objection to straight actors playing gay lovers now than there was with Brokeback Mountain twenty years ago, but both these actors have done so admirably in the past and do so here.  In Boston at conservatory in 1917 - Paul a scholarship singer from Kentucky, Josh a well-off orphan from Newport - they meet in a bar and bond over a love of folk music, but separate when the war comes.  After the war, Josh invites Paul up to Maine to go on a backcountry expedition to record rare folk songs on wax cylinders and sleep together con-tentedly.  Again they part, and Paul goes on to a singing career in Europe, but never gets any reply to his many letters, eventually leaving it all behind to go in search of Josh.  Chris Cooper narrates from the beginning, and in the end emerges as the older Paul, now a distinguished musicologist.  Among the film’s many virtues are the various song performances.  Pay more attention to the favorable reviews than to the spoilsports.
 
Of course, MUBI has lots of worthy films that I’ve already seen, but in searching around I found one rare favorite that I want to highlight, the photographic documentary Finding Vivian Maier (MC-75).  I never got a chance to show it at the Clark, when the auditorium shut down for renovation, but I did strongly recommend it here.
 
Another unique documentary is Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (MC-83), in which a group of Estonian women meet and get naked – emotionally as well as physically – in a shed where meat gets smoked, and go through a variety of traditional sauna rituals and sororal revelations.  Director Anna Hints captures the experience in lovely pictures of sculptural flesh and drifting smoke, with occasional sprints into a nearby pond or visitations by ancestral spirits.
 
As we Boomers reach old age (and refuse to leave the stage), we (or me at least) are seeing a lot of films about dementia.  In recent years we’ve had the pleasure (?) of seeing the likes of Julie Christie, Julianne Moore, Glenda Jackson, and Anthony Hopkins lose their minds on film.  (And the political pain of watching two presidents lose theirs in office.)  Familiar Touch (MC-87) is a semi-documentary first feature from young filmmaker Sarah Friedland, about an 80-year-old woman with dementia, as she is moved from her home to a care facility.  Most of the people in the film are residents of the actual location (a “geriatric country club” in Pasadena), but the lead is accomplished actress Kathleen Chalfant in a deep and delicate performance filled with humor and heart.  The film itself is tender, sweet, and serious, though ultimately heavy in implication.  As a young person’s imaginative reflection on the experience of old people, Friedland’s debut puts me in mind of Updike’s first novel Poorhouse Fair, which portends more awards for this writer-director’s career.
 
I’m not sure how Lingui, the Sacred Bonds (MC-83) wound up on my list, but I’m glad it did.  It’s the first film I’ve ever seen from Chad, even though writer-director M-S. Haroun has made a half-dozen well-received films before this.  It follows a 30-ish single mother and her 15-year-old daughter, as they struggle through a maze of patriarchal strictures to make sure the girl does not suffer the mother’s fate of expulsion and shunning.  The mother maintains them by laboriously extracting wire from old tires and weaving it into coal stoves, which she roves the streets of the capital to sell.  Outside of political and religious rule, the communal impulse of the title allows the pair to find the help they need from other women.  The documentary and pictorial elements of this compact film enhance the folkloric force of the story, as does the acting and the farflung location.  I recommend it to anyone with the patience and curiosity to seek it out.
 
Likewise, I’m not sure what led me to Falcon Lake (MC-71), but this find is definitely a keeper.  Canadian actress-turned-director Charlotte Le Bon situates her first feature on an isolated lakeside cabin in Quebec, and it’s très bon.  The mood suggests a teen slasher film, ridiculously played up in the trailer, but the film itself delivers a sensitive portrayal of adolescent desire.  A 13-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl are thrown together, even to the point of sharing a tiny bedroom, when their parents vacation together.  She’s a dark-browed Goth-in-the-making, he’s a dewy-eyed youth contending with puberty.  Forced into contact, they begin to find some common ground, and a mutually satisfying exchange of fantasies and fears.  A casual betrayal leads to disenchantment and break-up, with untoward consequences.  I’ll say no more, except that despite some trappings of a horror film, this story is grounded in real life with humor and sympathy, well-acted and beautifully shot.
 
MUBI has been in film production and distribution for a while, but now they’ve branched into tv series, with two estimable efforts.
 
Mussolini: Son of the Century (MC-74) rests on the bravura performance of Luca Marinelli in the title role.  He schemes and struts and spouts, often turning to the camera to explain what’s going on.  Starting from a place of extensive ignorance, I learned a lot about the rise of fascism in Italy after WWI, and had no trouble drawing the intended parallels to our own historical moment.  I’ve never admired Joe Wright’s films, but here he finds a subject that suits his over-the-top style, all pomp, no circumstance, a sort of frenetic factual phantasmagoria.  Got to give him credit as a Brit directing an 8-hour tv series in Italian without giving himself away.  This story of a bombastic buffoon’s rise to power follows in a tradition that runs from The Great Dictator through A Face in the Crowd to The Apprentice.  Both the humor and the razzmatazz seem appropriate to this serious and highly relevant subject, as the fascist impulse revives here and abroad.  The series concludes with a twist as Il Duce escapes his most difficult moment and consolidates absolute power at the beginning of 1925, when Marinelli turns and leans into the camera for one triumphant blackout word, which serves as an alarm bell to the rest of us.
 
I stumbled through Hal & Harper (MC-82), Cooper Raiff’s self-indulgent 9-episode series about a pair of siblings clinging together through dysfunction, mainly for Lili Reinhart’s performance as his sister.  Also Mark Ruffalo as their depressive father.  In writing, directing, and starring as one of the title characters, even as a first grader in classroom flashbacks, Raiff may have taken on more than he can chew, but does display a variety of talents.  My main complaint is the fractured time scheme, with continual jumps back and forth in a way that seems more annoying than illuminating.  The business of adults playing children among real children worked for PEN15 and might have worked here without the temporal whiplash.  When there was an episode that did stay in one time frame, I began to notice the jagged editing and the mostly-grating background music, and began to think it was a generational thing.  Nonetheless, Raiff demonstrates considerable sincerity and humor in celebrating the resiliency of family relationships.

Dip into MUBI when they have one of their special offers, and you will find plenty of interesting stuff to watch.