MARKETA LAZAROVA (1967, CZECHOSLOVOKIA)

Hulupalooza! (Post 12 of 12)

Marketa Lazarova

Renowned Czechoslovakian epic that comes across like part Ingmar Bergman and part David Lean. Set during the middle ages, Marketa Lazarova depicts quests for power, kidnapping, raping, pillaging, war and an awful lot of snow. I did feel at times that I need a guide to keep up with all the characters, but I will say this is one of the most beautifully shot films that I have ever seen.

VOYAGE TO ITALY (1953, ITALY)

Hulupalooza! (Post 11 of 12)

Voyage to Italy

Roberto Rossellini's Voyage to Italy is a film that doesn't seem to have a lot to it at first glance. A couple that have been married for several years travel to Italy and discover their marriage is in trouble and whose love for each other is in question. The husband (George Sanders) is a workaholic whose time away has caused some friction with his wife (Ingrid Bergman). She spends a lot of her time at museums and tries to find meaning or answers through a kind of intellectual understanding of life. Nothing overly dramatic happens to their marriage. It's like real life often is-you grow apart or familiarity begins to breed contempt. The ending does give hope for a reconciliation between the two, but happily ever after is not a given.

I do think there is more here than meets the eye and it's also interesting to see Sanders and Bergman speaking in Italian.  

THE VANISHING (1998, THE NETHERLANDS)

HULUPALOOZA!! (Post 10 of 12)

The Vanishing

The plot of George Sluzier's film The Vanishing (Spoorlos) doesn't go in the way you would think it might after you watch the first part of it..  

The Vanishing is an abduction movie light on action, but heavy on suspense. A woman is abducted at a rest stop and her boyfriend obsessively searches for her. Throughout the movie we see the abductor living his life, but we don't know what happened to his woman. We also see the boyfriend living his anguished life and desperately trying to piece together clues of her whereabouts. The way the plot turns when the boyfriend and the abductor finally meet up is original and surprising to say the least.

Sluzier remade his film in the U.S. in 1993 to very mixed reviews.

THE LAST WAVE (1976, AUSTRALIA)

HULUPALOOZA!!  (Post 9 of 12)

Definitely one of those cult movies I've heard about for since the late 70's but never got around to seeing. But what was it about again? Australia, Peter Weir, Richard Chamberlain...that's about all I knew about it.

After (finally) seeing it, it turns out this was about an American lawyer (Chamberlain) living in Australia that gets involved with a case involving four Aboriginal men accused of killing a man. This isn't any ordinary case. The lawyer continues to have strange dreams, mostly involving one of his clients (David Gulpilil, who also appeared in the Australian classic Walkabout). The film also involves apocalyptic weather, aboriginal tribal history and cultural clashes.

It was a movie that took me into its metaphysical plotline at times, but not nearly as far as I wanted to go with it. In other words, it's a movie I liked, but really wanted to love.