Streaming services are creatively upended by their need to drum up viewership in the post-syndication era, churning out half-hearted sequels and remakes that no one called for, (anyone remember He’s All That?) The movies on MUBI stand out because the service is willing to platform quality films from across the globe.
While Netflix contains unlimited potential for memes in its haphazard film categorization (listing Babadook under “LGBTQ+ Films” may have been a galaxy-brain analysis but it was more likely a mistake) MUBI crafts lists that feel thrillingly handmade. MUBI’s functionality celebrates filmmaking—how near impossible it is to make a movie and how miraculous it is when something is good; how every on-screen offering is caught in the tangled web of cinematic intertextuality, reliant on everything that came before. This list celebrates the best MUBI has to offer, focused on its offerings for Americans. Those in the U.K. can find our breakdown of movies available to them here.
Here are the 20 best movies on MUBI right now:
1. 35 Shots of RumYear: 2008
Director: Claire Denis
Stars: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dogue
Rating: NR
A poetic, Parisian take on Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring, 35 Shots of Rum is about the steady, rumbling progression of our lives. It’s only natural that Lionel (Alex Descas) literally keeps the trains moving forward. He and his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop) have a small, quiet life together. So do the others in their apartment building: Lionel’s old flame, the warm and chatty cabbie Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue), and Josephine’s new one, the scruffy drifter Noe (Gregoire Colin). The progress of vehicles, either stalling out, humming along or dutifully following their tracks, is given just as much screen time by Claire Denis as the dramatics between her characters. Elegantly interwoven, they reflect each other easily. We have choices, but we can easily stay on a path – in a rut. We can even stop completely, and it’s not the end of the world. With a close camera and minimal dialogue, Denis draws realism out of the quiet. And, out of the music – especially a rain-drenched barroom dance sequence set to the Commodores’ “Nightshift” – she draws magic. Love, electricity, passion and ennui flow as easily as alcohol at a wedding (or a wake, or a retirement). The rituals that connect us, even the most mundane, stand out from the day-to-day flow Denis observes, marking the easygoing film with moments and images that softly burn like the only remaining memories of a year gone by. 35 Shots of Rum isn’t just a movie you can live in, but one so insightful that you wonder if you’ve lived it before. —Jacob Oller
2. Lingui, the Sacred BondsYear: 2022
Directors: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Stars: Achouackh Abakar Souleymane, Rihane Khalil Alio, Youssouf Djaoro, Briya Gomdigue, Hadjé Fatimé Ngoua
Rating: NR
The Chadian word “lingui” denotes the invisible social ties that sustain communities of people, especially if they’re connected by a common unifying trait. In Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s film Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, this alliance is forged through the strife and solidarity intrinsic to womanhood. Though much of the Chadian-born, France-residing director’s work has focused on the lives of outsiders and underdogs, Lingui is his most feminine-forward film to date—perhaps save for his acclaimed 1994 breakthrough short film Maral Tanié, which chronicles a teenage girl forced by her family to marry a man in his 50s, a union which she refuses to consummate. Similarly in Lingui, a teenage girl named Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio) finds herself maligned by patriarchal society when she discovers she’s pregnant with a child she has no intention of raising. Fortunately, her single mother Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane) understands what it feels like to be shunned for carrying a child out of wedlock, and begins a quest with Maria to secure an abortion—despite the legal and societal ramifications that threaten them if their plot is exposed. –Natalia Keogan
3. Dead PigsYear: 2018
Director: Cathy Yan
Stars: Zazie Beetz, Mason Lee, Meng Li
Rating: NR
Cathy Yan exercises impressive control over narrative in her feature film debut. Simmering beneath the surface of modern Shanghai is a group of strangers struggling under their rapidly expanding city. Weaving together so many disparate storylines offers the audience a range of tones, keeping the viewer engaged as they float along a fairly simple plot conceit. Yan would go on to exercise her empathetic direction over wide-ranging ensemble casts in Birds of Prey and Succession; in Dead Pigs she balances performers whose distinction serves to illuminate each actor rather than distract from them. Dead Pigs stands as a stark, vulnerable encapsulation on the pitfalls of modernity and the haunting consequences of disconnection. –Anna McKibbin
4. And Then We DancedYear: 2019
Director: Levan Akin
Stars: Levan Gelbakhiani, Bachi Valishvili, Ana Javakishvili
Rating: NR
Meran (Levan Gelbakhiani) uses traditional Georgian dance to neutralize the acidic feelings that fester within, unexpressed and all-consuming. The specificity and rigor that this style of dance requires forces Meran to center his expectations, collecting the flurry of ambitions that are often so thick and inexpressible they threaten to solidify and hold him in place. Over the course of the film, dancing works to do more than just offer our protagonist a way to escape the cascade of thoughts and feelings–it opens a channel of communication that was previously silent. In one the most memorable music moments of recent cinema, Meran serenades Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) with a routine set to Robyn’s “Honey.” It acts as a profound expression of longing, hazy and unstable, caught in an unstable orange glow. –Anna McKibbin
5. TransitYear: 2018
Director: Christian Petzold
Stars: Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese
Rating: NR
In Christian Petzold’s Transit, based on Anna Segher’s WWII-based novel of the same name, the writer-director, like Bergman, strips all context from his story, but not by pulling it out of time. Instead, Petzold’s limned his adaptation in modern technologies and settings—contemporary cars line the streets of today’s Marseille; flat screens hang unimpressively in bars; military police dress in black riot gear, not a swastika in sight—though no one uses a cell phone or a computer, doomed to repeat themselves in bureaucratic offices and waiting in endless lines, all while the enemy, an occupational force, quickly sweeps across France. Odd and surprisingly high-concept, though never pleased with itself, Transit removes context by confusing it, treating its characters as if they’re in a kind of existential wartime limbo, forever fated to keep looking: for escape, for a lost loved one, for some food to eat or a bed to lie in, for a reason to keep enduring. Transit could’ve been a sci-fi drama were its characters ever shown an alternate reality. –Dom Sinacola
6. Inspector IkeRelease Date: February 18, 2022
Director: Graham Mason
Stars: Ikechukwu Ufomadu, Matt Barats, Ana Fabrega, John Early, Aparna Nancherla, Grace Rex
Rating: NR
Runtime: 82 minutes
In what seems like a lost TV movie from the 1970s, the understudy of an avant-garde theater group murders its star actor in cold blood so that he can finally have the spotlight for himself. He thinks he’s gotten away with it until Inspector Ike, New York City’s greatest police detective who, according to legend, can “solve crimes without any clues or evidence,” comes knocking at the door asking questions and poking holes in the understudy’s story. Since the exact details of the crime are revealed in the first act, Inspector Ike’s charm doesn’t come from trying to figure out whodunit, but from watching Inspector Ike unfold the case before him with signature deadpan—all while the killer’s inner psyche unravels as he tries to outrun his guilt. Where most detective parodies might take their leads for a bumbling fool, Inspector Ike himself is skillfully played straight-faced by Ikechukwu Ufomadu in a refreshing spin on an old comedy trope. Ike’s confidence in himself and in his work projects the presence of a trustworthy, comforting guiding hand in the absurd world that director Graham Mason has carefully crafted. Simultaneously deadpan and warmly funny, Inspector Ike borrows ingredients from multiple genres to create something weird and totally new in a way that honors the feelings of its characters, yet never takes itself too seriously. For example, the narrative flow of the film is interrupted so that Inspector Ike can relay a chili recipe to us. We’re encouraged to write it all down on a recipe card. With a pinch of satirical, self-deprecating humor here and a dash of giallo-esque deep red flashbacks there—all structured as a Columbo-style detective serial—you get a dish so hearty that you’ll find yourself clamoring for another bowl. In fact, after the credits rolled, I wished I lived in a time and place where I could tune into Inspector Ike’s adventures every week.–Katarina Docalovich
7. Wuthering HeightsYear: 2011
Director: Andrea Arnold
Stars: Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Solomon Glave
Rating: NR
Directed by Oscar-winning Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank), Wuthering Heights’ pacing is reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s The New World, where instead of Heathcliff and Catherine, it was John Smith and Pocahontas who slowly, silently wandered fields and rolled about the grass. Robbie Ryan, the director of photography, has been a long-time partner with Arnold, and together they have developed a unique style of storytelling, one that includes the landscape as a character in itself. Ryan has won four awards to date for his work on this film, and deservedly so. His perspective through the lens is both sensitive and bold, and very, very honest. The acting cannot be faulted. Every role is played impeccably well, making the period believability nearly infallible. Both Kaya Scodelario (Clash of the Titans, Skins) as the adult Catherine and Shannon Beer as the younger version were utterly convincing as the coy, love-torn heroine. It is James Howson, however, the adult Heathcliff himself, who steals the show. In his first-ever film role, Howson could have been plucked right off the pages of Brontë’s novel, with all the angst, confusion, awkwardness and beauty of the original protagonist. He makes the audience empathize with him, yet he still holds them at a distance, keeping the attention solely on himself to the very last reel. –Maryann Koopman Kelly
8. MelancholiaYear: 2011
Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård, Kiefer Sutherland
Rating: R
If you want a really, really disturbingly beautiful apocalypse, you can’t go wrong with Lars von Trier. Melancholia is the second of a trilogy of films in which the director dives into the nature of depression. It revolves around two sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) — after a staccato series of prologue images set to Wagner (if you’ve ever experienced severe depression, you’ll recognize the choppy, distanced, “underwater” quality of this first section), we open on Justine’s wedding reception. There is something seriously wrong with these people. Or is there? It seems like Justine’s boss is actually harassing her for ad copy in the middle of her own wedding toast. It seems like her father is a raging narcissist and her mother is “honest” in a way that makes you want to never take a phone call from her, ever. Everything seems off. And that’s before anyone realizes a runaway planet called Melancholia might be on a collision course with Earth. —Amy Glynn
9. Decision to LeaveRelease Date: October 14, 2022
Director: Park Chan-wook
Stars: Tang Wei, Park Hae-il
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes
A detective finds himself falling for his murder suspect, who is fingered for killing her husband. If that sounds like a plot ripped straight from an Alfred Hitchcock film, that’s because it’s textbook Park Chan-wook. The Korean director has been taking inspiration from Hitchcock for much of his career, one defined by twisty mysteries and perverse thrillers that the Master of Suspense likely could never have fathomed. Park’s latest is perhaps the director’s most Hitchcockian in the most crucial aspects, though also more subdued compared to his track record. Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is an overworked detective who is—in true clichéd, noir form—married to his job more than to his actual wife. The latter lives in quiet, foggy Iso while the “youngest detective in the country’s history” works weeks in Busan, where the crime and murder that sustains him runs rampant. The couple tends to talk about how to keep their marriage lively instead of actually acting upon it. Hae-jun’s wife (Lee Jung-hyun) relays helpful facts about the health benefits of having regular sex, suggesting that they commit to “doing it” once a week. Still, Hae-jun spends more time on stake-outs than in his own bed due to insomnia, which plagues him as a symptom of his pile of unresolved cases. Concurrently with another active case, Hae-jun finds himself adding another crime to his growing folder: A mountain-climber who fell tragically to his demise. Though by all appearances an accident (despite the late climber’s proficiency), the mountaineer’s much younger Chinese wife, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), quickly elicits suspicion from Hae-jun and his hot-head partner Soo-wan (Go Kyung-Pyo). Park introduces the film’s femme fatale in the most unassuming way: Camera on Hae-jun, with her measured voice off-screen as she enters the morgue to identify her deceased husband. Hyper-stylized, surprisingly funny and a little convoluted, at its heart, Decision to Leave is a tragic story about love, trust and, of course, murder. Arguably, Decision to Leave is more of a romance than anything else; the crime/mystery aspect of the narrative is the least interesting part, though one could assume that’s entirely intentional. While not negligible, the crime is more of a conduit through which the real meat of the story, the relationship between Hae-jun and Seo-rae, is catalyzed and slowly evolves. Their romance is dependent upon requited longing and looming, unresolved threat—the kind of threat that fuels Hae-jun’s sleepless life, the kind that he can’t live without. From the string-centric score to the noir archetypes, to the themes of romance, betrayal, obsession and voyeurism, Decision to Leave is Park’s most clear evocation of Hitchcock to date. Because of this, it becomes somewhat evident where the story will go, even when things take a turn. But the familiarity of the crime narrative reads as intentionally superficial, a vehicle for a more unconventional exploration of the standard detective/femme fatale romance which has laid the foundation for Park’s own sumptuous spin. While not Park’s best work, nor a masterpiece, Decision to Leave is an extravagant and hopelessly romantic thriller that weaves past and present into something entirely its own.–Brianna Zigler
10. Matthias and MaximeYear: 2019
Director: Xavier Dolan
Stars: Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, Xavier Dolan, Pier-Luc Funk
Rating: NR
There is an unexpected ferociousness which possesses Matthias and Maxime. A far cry from the softened coming-of-age love stories often adopted by audiences, director Xavier Dolan crafts something which honestly reflects the real-life anger undercutting the language and humor of young men. Matthias and Maxime’s relationship is ill-defined; eluding both of them as they mistakenly confuse the unspoken nature of their relationship for its non-existence. As their dynamic unravels, they draw into themselves, participating in a silent, seething standoff. Eventually the film culminates in something encouragingly open-ended, shifting from self-destructive to self-realized. –Anna McKibbin
11. The African DesperateYear: 2022
Director: Martine Syms
Stars: Diamond Stingily, Erin Leland, Cammisa Buerhaus
Rating: NR
Nobody’s better versed in matters of race than white people, assuming one of the two following conditions is true: When they outnumber people of color in a conversation, or when they’re in the sole company of their fellow honkies. Martine Syms’ excellent feature debut The African Desperate opens in media res on the former scenario, where the power dynamic puts Blackness under a white microscope. Palace Bryant (Diamond Stingily) sets up and sits down, waiting for the MFA thesis committee to assemble and pass judgment for the final time in her journey through art school; when they finally arrive, talk gets alternatingly fluffy, heavy, knotty and, in the parlance of the day, problematic, which is just a neutral way of saying “straight-up racist.” Some committee members flatter Palace seemingly out of hand. Others speak in such a highfalutin patter that Syms’ viewers, like Palace, may furrow their brows as they mentally untangle the nonsense dialect to figure out what in the hell’s being said. Others still make comments they shouldn’t. Again: Racism. It’d be unfair to Syms to say that the whole film is in this opening scene; there are, after all, about 90 minutes left to go once we’re through the first nine. But an awful lot of The African Desperate happens in those nine, or at least is established in those nine, and—depending on your personal experiences—those nine are crucial for framing the way that you engage with the remaining 90. –Andy Crump
12. Funny Ha HaYear: 2002
Director: Andrew Bujalski
Stars: Kate Dollenmayer, Mark Herlehy, Christian Rudder
Rating: NR
Depending on your patience for mumblecore, Funny Ha Ha will strike viewers as startlingly real or frustratingly monotonous, but Andrew Bujalski’s skill lies less in his writing, and more in his casting decisions. As Marnie, Kate Dollenmayer balances the winning naivete and paralyzing self-awareness of an early twentysomething. She interacts with the world honestly and openly, traits that instantly win us over despite her disastrous romantic missteps. She sits with her shoulders folded forward, hugging her elbows, like she is clinging to herself, physically feeling where she ends, and the world begins. Funny Ha Ha is one of most honest renderings of early adulthood, pinging between other more established personalities while you haplessly try to determine your own sense of self. –Anna McKibbin
13. Please Baby PleaseYear: 2022
Director: Amanda Kramer
Stars: Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling, Karl Glusman, Demi Moore, Ryan Simpkins
Rating: NR
In style and spirit, Please Baby Please embraces flamboyance. Amanda Kramer appears to reject the notion that less is more; for her, more is more. Specifically, the more that’s layered upon the story’s foundation, the more the foundation strengthens. You’d think that piling ballast on ballast would backfire and create instability instead of depicting it. You’d be wrong. Please Baby Please, not with a small amount of glee, happily resolves to be and to do too much, bit by bit ticking up the dial on set design, lighting, writing, performances, and subterranean neuroses until hitting a crescendo in its final dance cue. The excess works, mirroring the explosive release of Arthur and Suze’s muted appetites and identity crises after their initial encounter with the gang, called the Young Gents. Kramer’s filmmaking is vibrant, vital, easy to swallow while retaining astounding verbal density; you may wish for subtitles and a notepad to follow along with the near-constant back-and-forth between her characters. –Andy Crump
14. Family Romance, LLCYear: 2020
Director: Werner Herzog
Shooting narrative fiction like he would anything else he makes hardly does Werner Herzog any favors—the worst of this recent output being Salt and Fire, wherein Gael Garcia Bernal has diarrhea so bad he leaves the movie entirely. Which is meant to be a joke, but given Herzog’s inability to convey contrived scenarios in any way but a-narratively, circumstance and shades of verite style making his every movie seem like some sort of experimental documentary, it doesn’t read like a joke. It’s a weird, uncomfortable extension of a context we as an audience aren’t partial to. We’re concerned more than amused, repulsed more than compelled. Did he really have diarrhea? We’re not sure what’s going on. In Family Romance, LLC, filmed two years ago in Tokyo with non-professional actors, Herzog toys with the jarring nature of his docu-drama exigencies, able to plumb the depths of his self-awareness—perhaps his most lovable attribute as a filmmaker—in ways more heartbreaking and humanistic than anything he’s made in over a decade. Following small business owner Yuichi Ishii (playing himself) as he spends a day in the park with his estranged daughter (Mahiro), then meets with Mahiro’s mother (Miki Fujimaki), then accepts payment for services rendered pretending quite successfully to be Mahiro’s dad, then attends a meeting with a new client, who asks that one of Yuichi’s employees take the place of her sick husband during their daughter’s wedding, we move through the strangeness of this apparently real business, Family Romance, LLC, which rents out actors to play family members. How could anyone do this to their loved one? How could these actors keep from growing closer to the people they’re pretending to love? How come no one figures this out? Is this really a thing? Herzog provides lilting space for us to question the lovely artificiality of Yuichi’s encounters with faux family members—samurai LARPing and robot hotels and proper hedgehog maintenance find moments for reverie—then climbs nimbly out of the uncanny valley. Everyone knows the actor isn’t the bride’s real dad; her real dad is a drunk who will embarrass her on her wedding day, guaranteed, and all she really needs is a supportive father figure by her side. Despite the contrivance surrounding it, real or concocted, it’s a moment that rings achingly correct—a moment of quiet sublimity in our noisy world, found in a time when the world seems tapped out. Like all of Herzog’s best films, Family Romance, LLC reveals itself slowly, its greatness stumbled upon like a half-remembered dream of fake samurais committing fake seppuku, but filled with very real regret. —Dom Sinacola
15. AlcarràsYear: 2023
Director: Carla Simón
Stars: Jordi Pujol Dolce, Anna Otin, Xènia Roset, Albert Bosch, Ainet Jounou
Rating: NR
The Solé family is often sprawled across their home, fleeing the stress of the never-ending harvest. Simón crucially never offers us a clear layout of the family’s land, capturing it in a series of close-ups, disjointed and intimate. Every moment is fractured, conveying how disparate the family has become, desperate to avoid the perpetual stress that lingers over every conversation at this pivotal moment. In a particularly tense scene, Dolors (Anna Otín) massages the knots out of gruff patriarch Quimet’s (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) back, while her children do their own tasks, milling around them. Simón chooses to hold them in individual shots, never pulling back to frame them in relation to one another, only catching sight of them as they linger in the background of another’s close-up. It is a careful setup, one that balances the family’s desire for connection—piled into a contained space—against the inability to connect in a meaningful way. –Anna McKibbin
16. Pumping IronYear: 1977
Director: Robert Fiore, George Butler
Rating: PG
Runtime: 85 minutes
Behold arrogance anthropomorphized: A 28-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger, competing for his sixth Mr. Olympia title, effortlessly waxes poetic about his overall excellence, his litanies regarding the similarities between orgasming and lifting weights merely fodder between bouts of pumping the titular iron and/or flirting with women he can roll up into his biceps like little flesh burritos. He is both the epitome of the human form and almost tragically inhuman, so corporeally perfect that his physique seems unattainable, his status as a weightlifting wunderkind one of a kind. And yet, in the other corner, a young, nervous Lou Ferrigno primes his equally large body to usurp Arnold’s title, but without the magnanimous bluster and dick-wagging swagger the soon-to-be Hollywood icon makes no attempt to hide. Schwarzenegger understands that weightlifting is a mind game (like in any sport), buttressed best by a healthy sense of vanity and privilege, and directors Fiore and Butler mine Arnold’s past enough to divine where he inherited such self-absorption. Contrast this attitude against Ferrigno’s almost morbid shyness, and Pumping Iron becomes a fascinating glimpse at the kind of sociopathy required of living gods. —Dom Sinacola
17. DogvilleYear: 2003
Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Chloë Sevigny, Paul Bettany, James Caan
Rating: R
When Lars von Trier pits idealism against human selfishness, the latter always wins. His hubristic characters become what they hate by inescapable degrees. Dogville is his most trenchant polemic, with a minimal black-box theater set cultivating fevered lucidity. It’s about a town that destroys a woman by loving her, and a woman who loves a town by destroying it. In von Trier’s world, idealism inevitably leads to ruin, and there are only two kinds of people: martyrs and buffoons.—Brian Howe
18. Spring Night, Summer NightYear: 1967
Director: Joseph L. Anderson
Stars: Larue Hall, Ted Heimerdinger, Marjorie Johnson
Rating: R
In the late ’60s and early ’70s, independent cinema was defined by a startling realism that was borrowed from the griminess achieved through European filmmakers. John Cassavetes would arrive as the main sculptor of this style, known for his ability to capture real people anxiously spinning around one another in real time, but before there was A Woman Under the Influence or Faces, there was Joseph L. Anderson’s Spring Night, Summer Night. Anderson’s behind-the-scenes passion for scouting the right location pays off, with the black-and-white cinematography throwing the stark emptiness of the Ohio fields in a haunting light. As Jessica (Larue Hall) and Carl (Ted Heimerdinger) circle one another in increasingly disturbing ways, the silence, which was once alleviated by bursts of loud joy in the early half of the film, is made overwhelming, constricting this central couple as they pursue hope. Spring Night, Summer Night is an undervalued gem from a highly influential period of movie-making history. –Anna McKibbin
19. Perfumed NightmareYear: 1977
Director: Kidlat Tahimik
Stars: Kidlat Tahimik, Dolores Santamaria, Mang Fely
Rating: NR
Perfumed Nightmare has the feel and texture of a home video, clinging to people and objects with the same affection and care as a family member. As Kidlat, the small town jeepney driver, moves from the Philippines to Europe, the film veers away from the careful steadiness of the film’s earlier shots into a more frantic pace. Gradually the film unfolds layering grainy shots with earnest narration, exposing the insubstantiality of Kidlat’s initial dream to move to away from his rural village. By the film’s conclusion, the audience is longing for the careful meandering of the film’s earlier feeling. –Anna McKibbin
20. Silence in ParadiseYear: 2011
Director: Colbert Garcia
Stars: Alejandro Aguilar, Linda Baldrich, Francisco Bolívar
Rating: TV-MA
Following the love of two young people traversing their Bogotán neighborhood, Silence in Paradise is a story that expands to fill the exaggerated scale of similar romantic melodramas. Like a version of Romeo and Juliet with a more defined sense of place, in Colbert Garcia’s film, any promise of long-term love is clouded by the orange-hued dust of their subdivision. Yet these broader strokes are accompanied by more delicate, elaborate renderings of Colombian politics, giving the film space to express complicated feelings around the idea of loyalty. With a confident lead performance from Francisco Bolívar, who captures the emotional upheaval of a jilted twentysomething with genuine empathy, Silence in Paradise takes the internal lives of teenagers as seriously as the political uncertainty they grow up within. –Anna McKibbin