First & Last 023

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

The answer is after the jump...

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Review: A quartet of actresses grace "The Miracle Club"

by Matt St Clair

Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s The Miracle Club is the latest entry in the multiverse involving pictures where elderly, award-winning actress legends unite Avengers-style for an adventure. However, compared to previous entries in the unofficial multiverse like Book Club, 80 for Brady, and Poms, The Miracle Club is a more profound effort. There are moments of humor to be found in this story about friends coming together for a potentially “last” trip to fulfill an unrealized dream or goal but The Miracle Club leans heavily on the dramatic side.

Set in 1960s Ireland, Oscar winners Kathy Bates and Dame Maggie Smith play Eileen and Lily, two close-knit friends from the working-class village of Ballygar...

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MUBI: Three by Wong Kar-Wai

by Cláudio Alves

Happy birthday to Wong Kar-Wai. The Hong Kong auteur turns 65 today, the same day I say goodbye to 28 and welcome my 29th year –we're birthday twins! But of course, I've loved the director long before discovering we shared July 17th, having fallen for his cinema when I glimpsed Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung cross paths in slow-motion, saw the treacherous enchantment of a kitschy lamp lost in Buenos Aires, experienced a Nouvelle Vague color kaleidoscope to the sound of "California Dreamin'." It's only fitting to celebrate the date by pouring over some of Wong's most ravishing pictures, remembering his mastery as we mourn a decade since his last feature.

Join me as I consider three films MUBI has programmed specially for July, a collection they call As Time Goes By. A trio marked by lavish spectacle, they reach for the stars – a wuxia experiment, a sci-fi lament, and a martial-arts biopic like none other…

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First & Last 022

Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?

the answer and a few comments are after the jump...

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Doc Corner: 'Lakota Nation Vs. United States'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

If you ask me (and if you’re here, I would hope you hold my opinion in some sort of esteem), the best work of documentary so far this decade has been Raoul Peck’s four-part Exterminate All The Brutes from 2021. An epic feat of production, it brought a cinematic lens to a HBO doc-series that unflinchingly charted a history of white possession and genocide. I am hardly surprised it won a Peabody Award, but couldn’t make traction with mainstream awards bodies. Its content was tough, not made any easier as a viewing experience by the blunt-force storytelling of Peck that, maybe, people didn't expect from a multi-part doc series.

I bring this up to introduce Lakota Nation Vs. United States for a few reasons. For starters, they share an interest (if you can call it that) in the atrocities committed against Indigenous populations. It’s also very well made; beautifully shot and carefully edited with keen precision. A history book slicing a papercut into the viewer’s fingertip.

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