笼困

　　Five haunted-house enthusiast friends are still trying to recover from the trauma of being kidnapped the previous Halloween by the Blue Skeleton — a group who takes “extreme haunt” to another level. They decide to face their fears in order to move on and go back out on the road to find more haunted houses. However, ominous signs of the Blue Skeleton start appearing again…

　　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.

 她是一位国标舞者，却在重大赛事的紧要关头遭遇危机，幸好有位街头舞者挺身而出，不顾自身过往的伤痛，担任她的出赛舞伴。

　　在天眼尚未密布，监场保安仍会打瞌睡的二十世纪七十年代，名画大盗就是会光天化日，大剌剌走进美术馆，直接把猎物从墙上取下放入布袋运走。看似儿戏的一切，背后主谋还要是住在市郊、人畜无害的住家男人。凯莉·莱卡特完全弃用好莱坞盗宝片叙事公式，改以其擅长的左翼简约主义镜头，捕捉触犯艺术罪行者的日常生活、双面人的言行处境，以及事件周遭人情冷暖。阿瑟多夫的抽象画作未必是一个借口，但到头来凸显存在荒谬的公路逃亡，俨然为观众添加了不少欣赏和思考的层次。