Should you subscribe to Mubi?

MUBI is a global curated film streaming platform. It also produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusively available on its platform.

Mubi is one of several first-rate sites that cater to cinephiles. It is a mix of current and vintage films, the global scope of the selections and a truly eclectic array of genres is great. You could watch one movie a day and never feel aesthetically pigeonholed.

Available on:

MUBI's streaming platform is available in over 190 countries on the web, Roku devices, PlayStation, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, LG and Samsung Smart TVs, as well as on mobile devices including iPhone, iPad and Android.

Download and onboarding experience:

The size of the Android app is 12 MB and the download and onboarding experience was smooth. The content language preferences can be selected to find the language-specific content on the app. A subscription is needed to view content on the app.

Subscription Plan:

Mubi subscription is as follows-

What to expect:

MUBI is not just about discovering new cinema or classic masterpieces. It’s also about discussing and sharing these discoveries, which makes the platform seem like a small coffee shop... a place where you can gather and talk about alternative endings, directors’ cuts and whatever those frogs in Magnolia meant. Heated debates and passionate arguments are welcome.

Their film library is brimming with visionary films that wouldn’t fill a single cinema in Belgium for a week – not even a day. But if you searched the world (all of it), you might just find an audience of a thousand for these rare cinematic treats. And they don’t think a thousand people should be ignored just because they happen to live in different time zones or far away from Belgian cinemas. If someone needed to make such a precise film, it means that someone somewhere needs to watch it. More importantly, that someone might be you. Or Martin Scorsese (he happens to be a member too.) You’ll also find Hollywood favourites, from Annie Hall to The Royal Tenenbaums.

After all, not everyone can make it to the Cannes Film Festival – especially if you are a school teacher or you live in the middle of nowhere(or both) – but that doesn’t mean you can’t recite all of Kubrick’s films in reverse chronological order, or that you are not desperate to watch the latest Kitano film that’s definitely not going to be released in your local multiplex.

And that’s Mubi's point: Popular doesn’t always mean good.

Design and experience:

Mubi has a minimalistic design, unlike usual OTT platforms, providing a relief for the user's eyes and giving the audience an opportunity to concentrate only on the content they want. 

In the now showing section of the app, there are lots of widgets that keep changing like:

• Film of the day
• New Voices
• Phantoms Among us: The Films of Christian Petzold
• Mubi India

Some of the other widgets are:

• Trending
• Mubi Top 100
• And the Oscar goes to

As well as:

• Festival Focus
• 1980’s masterpieces
• Recently added

• Documentaries
• The modern times of charlie chaplin
• Voila Varda

• 1960’s masterpieces
• Adaptations
• Shorts

• Women with movie cameras
• Funny haha
• Mubi releases
• Leaving soon

• Film festival favorites
• Rediscovered

among many others.

I watched the film ‘Palunki’ as part of this review.

The movie/show detail page has the following information:

The standard features available on the video player include:

• Download Films in HD
• Watch Offline
• Get film of the day notification
• Watch on up to 5 devices
• 2 screens at the same time

Search:

• Search can be done within a category like films, cast and crew, lists, awards and festivals
• Mubi also has a ‘browse’ widget which helps users find what they are looking for with specialised lists

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• Wide variety of content across languages, including hand picked content, exclusive content + HD streaming.
• The app’s homepage is classified into widgets for various themes, making it easier for the user to choose content.
• Option to download content and watch the same offline.
• Chrome cast support to enable users to watch the content on their Smart TVs.
• Mubi does not show any ads during playback, which is ideal.
• Critic/user ratings to help users choose a title.

Cons

• No content available for free.
• Titles disappear in 30 days

Why should one subscribe?

• Wide variety of content in various languages
• Exclusive titles
• From path-breaking debut directors to celebrated auteurs, this platform also curates films that have been screened at popular film festivals such as Cannes, Sundance and Berlin. The films showcased range from lesser-known Korean masterpieces to the classics of Ray.
• Rating:

Based on the user experience, the pros and cons, the rating given to Mubi is 8 on 10.