Starting this week, we’ll be adding another awesome streaming service to our weekly updates. For those of you who don’t know MUBI, it’s a uniquely curated streaming site which selects a different indie or genre film every day, available for 30 days. Thus, members of MUBI can watch one of 30 films at any one time. Plus, with gorgeous web design and a very active community of members, MUBI is a unique experience, one of the best ways to watch and talk about films online. Plus, it’s very reasonably priced ($4.99 a month). We’re very excited to recommend the many great films on MUBI in the coming weeks. To see what’s streaming there and on the usual suspects, see below!

Netflix

Eastern Boys (Robin Campillo, 2013)

One of the more interesting foreign films to be released in the U.S. so far this year, Campillo’s Eastern Boys starts out as a sex thriller before turning into a gay romance and eventually into a social commentary on immigration. Despite the large swings in tone, it feels like a complete film, and largely a satisfying one. Olivier Rabourdin gives a very good lead performance as Daniel, a middle-aged man who propositions a Ukrainian teen. Their transaction doesn’t end up as expected, which ultimately builds through the unpredictable film. Campillo (The Class, Time Out) shows to be a smart and challenging filmmaker—his work in the dialogue-free first scene is a stand-out, and one of the best openings in a film in the last couple of years.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013)
High Fidelity (Stephen Frears, 2000)
Point and Shoot (Marshall Curry, 2014)
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin, 2013)
Scandal (Season 4)

Fandor

The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921)

The bridge between Chaplin’s very successful career in short comedies and the features that built his legacy, The Kid is his first great film. The 68-minute gem showed that Chaplin was much more than a merely brilliant comedian, with the heart-breaking story of a lonely tramp and an orphaned boy (played by the incomparable Jackie Coogan, the original child star). The film is incredibly grounded in the relationship between its two stars, but is also well balanced with an oft-remade window salesman scene and a bit of whimsical fantasy. If you want to check out The Kid on Fandor, you’ll have to do it by June 28. The streaming site has also introduced a new Spotlight series, called “Breaking Binary” highlighting films that challenge the social definitions of gender. This very timely collection includes 52 Tuesdays, Let Me Die a Woman, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, and more.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
Don’t Follow Me (I’m Lost) (William Miller, 2012)
Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Father (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1988)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
Seduced and Abandoned (Pietro Germi, 1964)

MUBI

Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008)

After an increasingly disappointing run in Hollywood, Hong Kong master John Woo went back home in 2008 to make the epic Red Cliff. The film stars Tony Leung as a warrior fighting in the Battle of Red Cliffs at the end of the Han dynasty. It isn’t quite like the two gun actioners that made Woo one of the hottest directors in the world, but Red Cliff‘s huge scale, intense battle sequences, and beautiful production design which showed the filmmaker still had a lot to offer audiences. And if its 145 minute runtime just isn’t enough, you can also stream the epic’s second part (at another 142 minutes).

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
The Adventurer (Charles Chaplin, 1917)
After Tiller (Martha Shane & Lana Wilson, 2013)
The Fortress (Fernand Melgar, 2008)
Vampir (Pere Portabella, 1970)
The Vanquished (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1953)

Video On-Demand

Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón, 2014)

If you’ve visited Way Too Indie at all in the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard us rant and rave about the excellent Argentinian film Wild Tales. We were on the hype train early, naming it one of our favorites to screen at TIFF 2014 and one of the best films we saw coming into the year. This week, when we reviewed Wild Tales for its DVD and Blu-ray release, and we called it one of the most rewarding and entertaining films of the year. Oh, and it landed at #3 on of best of the year so far list. So obviously, Wild Tales has our highest recommendation. Run, don’t walk.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Chappie (Neill Blomkamp, 2015)
The Lazarus Effect (David Gelb, 2015)
Run All Night (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2015)

This Saturday, January 11th at San Francisco’s Castro Theater, there’s going to be an all-day, 100-Year Anniversary celebration of one of the most essential, irreplaceable, and beloved characters in the history of film, Charlie Chaplin’s “The Tramp”. The bumbling, infectiously good-hearted fellow has been a prototype for comic protagonists to this day, and anyone who’s familiar with him has fond memories of watching him evade the authorities with hilarious, cartoonish flair.

The program will include classic shorts and full-length features starring the comic idol set to live music accompaniment. There’s no better place to experience Chaplin in the Bay Area than the silent-era Castro Theater, and whether you’re a long-time Chaplin devotee or a silent film beginner, it’s sure to be a blast.

Here’s the program, via silentfilm.org :

Our Mutual Friend: Three Chaplin Shorts at 1PM 
Charlie Chaplain made some of his greatest comedies at the Mutual Film Corporation. Chaplin acknowledged his time at Mutual as the most inventive and liberating period of his career. Approximately 90 minutes total. The shorts program includes:

• The Vagabond (1916, with Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell). Charlie Chaplin plays is a musician who rescues a girl from a band of gypsies.
• The Cure (1917, with Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman). An inebriated Charlie Chaplin checks into a sanitarium to take the cure, but brings a cabinet of liquor with him.
• Easy Street (1917, with Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell). Blending comedy and social commentary Charlie Chaplin’s character goes from tramp to police constable.

Accompanied by Jon Mirsalis on piano.

THE KID at 4PM 
Chaplin’s Little Tramp character becomes a surrogate father to an abandoned child in this eloquent marriage of comedy and sentiment. One of his most personal films, Chaplin himself was placed in a home for destitute children at age seven, THE KID is considered by many to be his most perfect. Additionally, celebrate the centennial of with Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), the first appearance of Chaplin’s Tramp character. Approximately 70 minutes total.
Accompanied by San Francisco Chamber Orchestra with Timothy Brock conducting Chaplin’s score. 

Preceding THE KID, there will be Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike contest. Come dressed as the Little Tramp and win a prize!

THE GOLD RUSH at 7:30PM 
Charlie Chaplin, inspired by images of the 1896 Klondike gold rush and the Donner Party disaster of 1846 (in which snowbound immigrants resorted to eating their shoes—and their dead companions—to survive), manages to turn a story of cold, hunger, and loneliness into a sublime comedy. The Little Tramp becomes a prospector who sets out for the Klondike to strike it rich, battling starvation, bears, and other prospectors along the way. THE GOLD RUSH contains some of the most iconic images in cinema, including the famous scene in which Charlie makes a gourmet feast of his boot! Georgia Hale plays the beautiful dance hall entertainer who steals Charlie’s heart. Approximately 80 minutes.
Accompanied by San Francisco Chamber Orchestra with Timothy Brock conducting Chaplin’s score.