Titane (MUBI)
Titane finally comes to streaming. Julia Ducournau became the first female director to win a solo Palme d’Or, at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Her radical film is about a woman who has sex with a car and gets pregnant. As we wrote in this interview with the director, “the truest subversion may be the aching tenderness within this body horror film”.
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Journey To Greenland (Netflix)
This French movie features Thomas Blanchard and Thomas Scimeca, two struggling actors in Paris, who arrive in Kullorsuaq, a remote hunting and fishing settlement in Greenland, where the former's father has been living for 20 years. Father-son have a strained relationship: "We are handicapped when it comes to intimate family issues". There is no running water or drainage system in toilets; no Wi-Fi; windows have no shutters to cut out the endless days; and the town has banned alcohol. There's just stillness and quiet, and a frozen landscape. As the city dwellers interact with the Innuits, they put their own life into perspective.
Ashes of Time Redux (MUBI)
Probably the most underseen of Wong Kar-Wai's films, this wuxia epic is ravishing but elusive. The dream cast includes Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Carina Lau and Maggie Cheung. This is the re-edited version of the film.
Midnight Asia (Netflix)
This docuseries looks at six Asian cities through the lens of night-time: the food, the sights and sounds. Tokyo, structured and orderly during the day, becomes playful at night. We meet Shotaro Kamijo, the owner of a travelling bar Twillo, who announces his location on Twitter, and Sumiko Iwamuro, an 82-year-old DJ who runs a food joint by day. In Seoul, with its focus on "newtro" (new and retro), small breweries are giving a modern twist to makgeolli, and away from the K-pop scene, the band Leenalchi is pulling in the crowds with its traditional style of musical storytelling, or pansori. In Mumbai, the city of hustle, flair bartender Ami Shroff shows us her moves, while at Sardar's pav-bhaji is an ode to dollops of butter. The other cities covered are Bangkok, Manila and Taipei.
Candyman (Amazon Prime Video)
In this 2021 slasher movie, writer-director Nia DaCosta updates the Sandman legend, setting it in the same neighbourhood, now gentrified. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as an artist obsessed with the Candyman's legend, while Tony Todd reprises his titular role from the earlier films.
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