献身/My Sex Story

　　32岁的劳伦·柯伦（克里斯蒂娜·里奇）和丈夫罗素（布莱登·佛雷切）搬进了设备先进齐全的新公寓。刚刚因为失去孩子而遭受了心理创伤患躁郁症的劳伦对公寓的安保监控系统很满意，但随后发现公寓里有些不对劲，她怀疑酒店的拥有者暗中非法操控住在其中的用户，但她的丈夫认为这些都是她的想象。劳伦独自开始调查建造公寓的公司，并雇佣了一个帮手-阴谋论者弗侬·沙斯菲尔德（约翰·库萨克）。弗侬认为这间公寓是个试验场所，里面的住户是个巨大洗脑阴谋的小白鼠。随着调查深入，劳伦也遇到了生命威胁……

　　阿里（福里斯特·惠特克 Forest Whitaker 饰）和母亲是从曾经惨绝人寰的种族屠杀中幸免于难的幸存者，虽然如今的他已然出人头地成为了开普敦警局重案组的负责人，但儿时充满了血腥和恐惧的回忆依然沉淀在他的内心之中，阴影挥之不去。　　布莱恩（奥兰多·布鲁姆 Orlando Bloom 饰）是阿里的下属，他的家族成员曾经是种族隔离活动中的激进分子，不过这并没能够影响到他和阿里之间的信任和友谊。一连串凶杀案的发生和一种新型毒品的出现将城市推到了风口浪尖，直到这时，肩负着巨大压力的阿里才发现，那些他以为已经成为过去的事情，其实并没有真正的过去，也永远都不会过去。

　　Eight college friends head to a "Haunted Rental" for Halloween. But when they replay the game that made the house infamous, they awaken an evil spirit intent on stealing their souls.

　　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.