MUBI Update: 9 December

Woman on Fire Looks for Water (Malaysia, 2010), pictured above
I’m particularly proud this week to recommend a wonderful Malaysian film, Woman on Fire Looks for Water, whose existence on MUBI embodies what we are trying to do. I caught this film less than a year ago when it played at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January, and it turned out to be the best new feature I saw there.
Immediately I set our team on acquiring it, something we usually have little luck doing for new films because filmmakers and producers want their movies to play in theatres first, then on DVD, and finally on VOD platforms. But the producers for this knew a perfect fit when they saw it: MUBI was founded to be an alternative distribution channel for precisely this kind of film: a small movie of great beauty from a new talent (promising Malaysian director Woo Ming Jin) that traditional and conservative channels of distribution thought was unfit for release. Well, lucky us, and more importantly, lucky you! Now we’re hosting the online premiere of one of my favourite films of the year, an exquisite work by an exciting new filmmaker on the international scene. If you need more convincing, I wrote about the film from Rotterdam at our online magazine, The Daily Notebook.
Available in: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom
Everyone Else (Germany, 2009)
Birgit Minichmayr walked away from the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival with a best actress award for Maren Ade’s hot-blooded island-set drama, which also took away the Silver Bear award. Like Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy or even Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, this film watches the relationship of a couple that knows one another so well, loved and hates each other by turns, fall apart in slow motion. Instead of Rossellini’s philosophic existentialism or Kubrick’s nightmare-horror, Ade takes the route of naturalism, observing the interactions of Minichmayer’s buoyant character and her sullen boyfriend during a vacation to Sardinia with revealing detail. In last year’s writers’ poll for our online magazine I paired this film in a fantasy double feature with Hitchcock’s Marnie, as well as the above mentioned films, Antonioni’s L’avventura and even Albert Brooks’ Modern Romance —read why here. We also interviewed the writer/director from Berlin at The Daily Notebook.
Available in: Switzerland
Comic Book Confidential (United States / Canada, 1989)
Director Ron Mann has done his share of documenting the fascinating and eccentric histories of American popular culture in a number of films (Twist, Grass, Tales of the Rat Fink), and this film on comic books is one of his best. It profiles twenty-two of the most significant artists and writers working in comic books, graphic novels and strip-art in North America.
Available in: UK, Germany, France
The House of the Devil (United States, 2009)
This terrific genre film came as a surprise to many horror fans last year, a precise and chilling homage to older school (though not that old, think 1970s, Halloween-style) horror films. Director Ti West evocatively strips his film down to the basics: a coed stuck in a creepy house. But that doesn’t even begin to describe that happens next. The poster for this film, commented upon by our own Adrian Curry in a Movie Poster of the Week post, neatly sums up the eerie dose of classic American horror on display here.
Available in: Denmark, Norway, Finland