New and upcoming titles to stream online
With cinemas closed across the UK, and the entire country spending a whole lot more time in our living rooms, lockdown has - unsurprisingly - turbocharged the video-on-demand market. As Charles Gant’s column in the brand new “summer edition” of Sight and Sound reveals, Curzon Home Cinema has seen a massive 360% increase in box office since the same period last year, BFI Player streams are up 300%, and MUBI saw a 65% growth in subscribers in the first three months of the year.
It’s fantastic to see that there’s still such a huge appetite for film amongst audiences across the country. And we're certain that this period, far from diminishing cinema attendance when we’re all finally able to reopen, will have a revitalizing impact on the industry. The extra time is providing people with the change to reconnect their passion for cinema, delve deeper into film history, and discover old classics. MUBI is doing amazing work in this respect and has recently launched a library allowing members to rediscover hundreds of films and retrospectives.
Alongside catching up with the classics, there’s also a steady flow of new releases currently being made available on the major platforms too. And whilst it’s undeniably a shame that these fantastic films most likely won’t ever see a theatrical release, there’s a huge potential audience out there for them via streaming platforms – and that can only be a good thing.
With that in mind, here are our a few recommendations for new and upcoming titles that we would have been screening this month…
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (15)
One of our favourite films from this year’s Berlinale; Eliza Hittman’s heartbreaking and painfully authentic drama follows a teenage girl from small-town Pennsylvania as she travels to New York City with her cousin to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
A Reclaim the Frame Q&A with producers Adele Romanski and Sara Murphy is available to watch now on Showroom Cinema’s Facebook page.
Another brilliant and understated U.S. indie, Director Kitty Green’s #MeToo fiction feature debut is about a promising college graduate who finds herself working as the junior assistant for a media mogul.
Grímur Hákonarson’s follow up to 2015’s Rams sees Inga, a middle-aged dairy farmer living in a small Icelandic farming community, rebel against the all-powerful local cooperative, who she blames for her husband’s suicide. Like last year’s Woman at War,it’s a heartfelt, funny, and bittersweet portrait of a woman using her resilience and resourcefulness to push back against powerful interests.
Very much one for the Celluloid Screams fans out there, Dreamland is a truly bonkers hard-boiled noir meets vampire B-movie from director Bruce McDonald (Pontypool). Surely destined to become a midnight movie staple, the film stars Pontypool’s Stephen McHattie in dual roles as both a grizzled hitman and a Chet Baker-esque trumpet player.
All Showroom Members can access three months MUBI subscription for free. Find out more here.
This article first featured in the Sheffield Telegraph on 4 June 2020.
