森咲智美 – M

　　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.

　　帶著過往傷痛，塞吉歐只身一人前往「微笑之村」擔任代理教師。這座對負能量零容忍的小鎮，明明曾遭逢巨變，居民們卻笑口常開。原來，讓這座微笑之村風光明媚的秘方，是一位能吸取人間苦痛的男孩，他的身體如祭壇，透過擁抱承擔全村的悲傷。他為人搭建快樂天堂，自己卻陷入無盡黑暗。塞吉歐與男孩的相遇，攪亂了鎮上的平衡；那座煉獄之門，也終將反向人間敞開。

 1985年，濃霧籠罩的郊外，周日早晨少女麗莎·約翰遜（阿比蓋爾·布蕾斯琳 Abigail Breslin 飾）被弟弟羅比（Peter DaCunha 飾）吵醒。她頗感煩惱地起床，按照媽媽（米歇爾·諾爾頓 Michelle Nolden 飾）的指示洗衣服，爸爸布魯斯（彼德·奧德博拉治 Peter Outerbridge 飾）則在地下室修著汽車。看似平凡無奇的普通人家，卻彌漫著詭異神秘的氣息。不知曾幾何時，麗莎發現每天重復著同樣的內容，家人反復干著同樣的事、說著同樣的話、度過同一個濃霧籠罩的周末。她嘗試改變這一切，然而無從下手，此外更有帶著死神氣息的男子警告麗莎不要破壞當前的一切。無法忍受折磨的麗莎，不可避免落入過去、現在和未來的夾縫中，局勢完全失控……

　　影片的故事發生在波士頓，巴恩斯扮演的尼克是一位意大利裔的美國年輕人，躊躇滿志的他加入波士頓黑手黨，決心開創一番事業，卻發現這個犯罪組織早已不復昔日之勇。　　于是尼克背著他的老板（《落水狗》、《壞中尉》男星哈威·凱特爾飾），自立門戶，擴張版圖，希望重塑往昔的輝煌。一手金錢，一手美人（莉頓·梅斯特飾），尼克完全不知道自己正走在危險的懸崖邊。