玉女聊齋

　　當一位孤獨的真正犯罪迷遇到她最喜歡的播客主持人時，浪漫擦出了火花，但事情很快變得奇怪，因為他對她的迷戀變成了癡迷，而他最新的劇集似乎圍繞著她最終的謀殺展開。

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

　　晴朗的一天，三年前痛失男友的珍娜（絲柯·泰勒-考普頓 Scout Taylor-Compton 飾）與好友瑞妮（克里斯蒂娜·尤羅爾 Christina Ulloa 飾）、邁克（邁克爾·科彭 Michael Copon 飾）以及新結識的帥氣青年伊安（特拉維斯·范·文克 Travis Van Winkle 飾）前往某個鄉村，參加當地舉行的五月節。湖畔小屋，笑語歡歌，青年男女們縱情歡樂，只有珍娜強顏歡笑，似乎久久無法從三年前的慘劇中走出。隨著夜幕降臨，四人走入桑拿室，體會無上的蒸汽享受，而危機也正一步步向他們迫近。在此期間，邁克和瑞妮突然爆發爭吵，前者奪門而出，大發雷霆，而瑞妮和珍娜、伊安稍后卻發現，他們三人卻被意外鎖在桑拿室中。　　溫度逐漸升高，而死神的腳步越來越近……

　　Newlyweds move into their dream home where they discover a collection of 100-year-old letters from a young woman who committed suicide after being abandoned by the owner of the home.