Godland (2022)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide
Timed for an Easter release, this spiritual epic charts the efforts of a 19th-century Danish pastor to set up a church in a remote part of Iceland. Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason (A White, White Day, 2019) has been slowly building a rep on the international circuit but here goes for broke with an austere, Carl Dreyer-esque drama, stunningly shot and composed within a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Werner Herzog and even the Scorsese of Silence (2016) may be other reference points for a story of a religious community attempting civilisation within wild, untamed landscapes.
Top Hat (1935)
Where’s it on? Selected cinemas, including BFI Southbank
A great screwball comedy that also happens to boast a soundtrack of wall-to-wall bangers by Irving Berlin – notably ‘Cheek to Cheek’ – Top Hat is the crowning achievement of the 10 films that Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire danced through together. Kicking off in London, climaxing on the gondolas in Venice, but never actually leaving the RKO backlot, the plot is the usual tower of misunderstandings and romantic complications – the flimsiest of constructions to string together a succession of divine musical set-pieces against stunning art-deco sets. The film is back in selected cinemas, tied to the Rogers season currently at BFI Southbank.
Laurin (1989)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
Here’s another off-grid rediscovery from the Second Run DVD label: a horror-tinged German drama centred around a young girl experiencing night-time visions in an early 19th-century port town where a child killer is at large. It’s the directorial debut of one Robert Sigl, who fills his frames with atmospheric detail – shadows, oil lamps, wolves and the like. Freudian undercurrents and the mood of sexual unease suggest a kinship with Angela Carter’s revisionist fairytales, the Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) or even the childhood terrors of films like Celia (1989) or The Reflecting Skin (1990).
King of Kings (1961)
Where’s it on? BBC Two, Friday, 10am
The Easter television schedules are rarely without one of Hollywood’s old Biblical epics. This year we get King of Kings, Nicholas Ray’s version of the life of Christ. Although not one of Ray’s best films, there’s fascination in seeing his established interest in outsiders and rebels transposed to Jesus, with Jeffrey Hunter playing the Son of God as a maverick rabble-rouser haunted by interior anguish. Only Orson Welles could have narrated it, with Ray Bradbury brought on board to brush up the ending and Miklós Rózsa composing the kind of mammoth choral score affectionately pastiched by the Coen brothers in Hail, Caesar! (2016).
Essential Killing (2010)
Where’s it on? BFI Player
Unlikely casting, but Vincent Gallo plays a Taliban soldier who is captured by US forces, detained and tortured, but slips through his captors’ fingers while being transported to Poland. So begins a survivalist odyssey through snow-covered forests – foraging for food, killing those who cross his path. This terse action thriller is one of four films by Jerzy Skolimowski being added to the subscription menu on BFI Player this week, along with his early feature Le Départ (1967), his uncanny London-set romance Deep End (1970) and latest release EO (2022), which shares Essential Killing’s taste for animal-centred surrealism.
