CULTFILMS PRESENTS: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. (1963) REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

CULTFILMS PRESENTS: MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE. (1964) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

TWO WOMEN/A SPECIAL DAY: A DOUBLE BILL OF SOPHIA LOREN FILM REVIEWS FROM SANDRA HARRIS.

MUBI Selects - Friday 27th March 2015

It's time to relax as the weekend  has arrived 2 days of relaxation, and bliss chill out after the hard slog of the week.It's time to refuel your brain with sophistication and MUBI Selects.

In our latest weekly 'Mubi Selects' we've teamed with MUBI the purveyors of great cinema online curating a great selection of cult, classic, independent, and award-winning movies. It's an international community discovering wonderful intelligent thought provoking films MUBI is your passport to those great films.

MUBI unleash great new films every week and in our MUBI Selects we've picked  a selection of those great movies  help you enjoy that lazy weekend you desire...

Let The Right One In (2008)| Thomas Alfredson

A genuinely beautiful film and a rarity these days a film with originality. Let The Right One In delivers a dark edged coming of age tale, a modern day vampire story, an arthouse classic. Everyone gets lonely this story embraces the loneliness a story of Oskar a young boy, whose an outsider, left to fend for himself and also a victim of bullies. One cold night he meets an mysterious girl called Eli and as the a romance blossoms Oskar learns that Eli has a dark secret.This film is endearing compelling film that deserves your precious free weekend time.


Marriage Italian Style (1964) |Vittorio De Sica

Sophia Loren is the quintessential figure of beauty when it comes to beautiful women in film and this film showcases her beauty as well as a wonderful remind us why her on screen chemistry with Marcello Mastroianni was one of film's best ever. Marriage Italian Style is sexism and misogyny of the times A clever satirical tale of gender politics backed up by a wonderful incandescent Loren delivers why we love Italian cinema so much. Loren plays the long suffering mistress of wealthy Domenico who dreams of been more than his 'bit on the side' and hatches a plan to get her wish.


Downfall (2004) | Oliver Hirschbiegel

if your looking for a powerhouse performance that deserved Oscar recognition you can't go wrong with Bruno Ganz's in Downfall. Playing the genocidal Adolf Hitler and final days of the Nazi dictator in his Berlin bunker the end days of WWII all told through the eyes of his secretary Traudl Junge. It may not be the easiest film to watch, a stark devastating film may try to show you the man with compassion but confirming man full of hate.


Hawaii, Oslo (2004) | Erik Poppe

If you enjoy Lars Von Trier's (even Ruben Ostlund) films that have intersecting stories Hawaii, Osla will do the trick. Poppe is one of Scandinavia's film contemporaries drawn to human portraits showcasing through every one of the senses, compelling, satirical, emotional. The film is set in one of Oslo's hottest days when strangers paths cross like a nurse who senses the future when sleeping and a suicidal pop star who craves the past...

For a price of a coffee from one of those chains what better way to enjoy the weekend and every day great films at MUBI? click below to get more info on the other fantastic films on offer...

DVD Review - Sunflower (I girasoli, 1970)

Vittorio Di Sica's Sunflower Starring Sophia Loren Re-Mastered To Be Re-released On DVD

Oscar-winning screen siren Sophia Loren's classic Sunflower finally gets the release it deserves as it arrives on DVD and VOD in a stunningly re-mastered version, presented in its original widescreen format courtesy of Argent Films.

Loren (Two Women, A Special Day) and award-winning leading man Marcello Mastroianni (Dolce Vita, 8 1/2) are newlywed lovers torn apart by war, despite almost impossible odds they never give up on one another. Originally released in 1970, the film comes to DVD in a newly restored version, taken from HD elements, befitting its sumptuous photography (by Giuseppe Rotunno, who lit most Italian headliners including The Leopard, he was Fellini's cinematographer and received an Oscar nomination for All That Jazz), and production values. Sunflower is presented for the first time in its entirety featuring eight minutes of previously unseen scenes and comes complete with an exclusive documentary Sophia, Yesterday Today Tomorrow, woven around an intimate interview with Loren. The DVD comes with alternative language options: the English language version and optional Italian audio with new improved, switchable, English subtitles.


Twelve days before WW II breaks out, Giovanna (Loren) marries Antonio (Mastroianni), with no desire to fight in the conflict he fakes insanity in an attempt to avoid the draft. Officials see through

the charade and Antonio is sent to the Russian front, where soldiers must endure unbearable freezing temperatures and a short supply of rations.

As the war ends, Antonio is left to die in the snow on the Russian front, but is found by a beautiful Russian girl who hides him and helps him recover. Giovanna refuses to believe that her missing in action husband is dead and travels to the sunflower plains of Ukraine - seemingly to the end of the earth, in by-then post-war Russia - to search for the man she vowed she would never abandon.

Produced by Loren's husband, Carlo Ponti of Doctor Zhivago fame, Sunflower recalls Zhivago with its rich, wide-vista production of this heartfelt drama of war-torn lovers. Underpinned by Henry Mancini's Oscar-nominated rousing score and magnificently directed by one of Italy's greatest filmmakers, Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Two Women), who taps into his Neo-realist roots to depict the human tragedy of war-displaced persons as seen through the heroic determination of Loren's character.

SUNFLOWER will also launch on iTunes on 26 January followed by other selected VOD platforms exclusively for rental & download to own