小蒜头

　　在一个异常炎热的日子里，三个不同的家庭发现了一个奇怪的秘密——他们刚刚死去的亲人又回来了。他们不知道该怎么办——这些不是毫无意识的僵尸，而是完全不同的东西。但究竟是什么呢？

　　即将退伍的南韩兵长千禹（高庚杓 饰），某天意外在紧绷的南北韩军事线附近，捡到一张飘向自己的头奖彩券，之后却一个不小心，让这张彩券乘风飘向无法涉足的北韩…。为了靠57亿奖金实现退伍梦想，他使出浑身解数寻找彩券，没想到竟被北韩士兵荣浩（李伊庚 饰）给捡到…。跟彩券擦身而过的 千禹，以及在北韩不过是张纸片，必须到南韩把彩券换成奖金的荣浩，再加上意想不到的成员们共同加入，双方为了死守这57亿巨额奖金，决定“越线”展开惊险刺激的机密协商······

　　《灵魂灯》的故事发生在封建时代的一个北方村庄。Thuong 独自抚养儿子，希望丈夫服完兵役后能回来。一天，Linh（Thuong 的儿子）无意中捡到一盏神秘的灯。他开始称墙上的影子为父亲。据村里的巫师说，这是一盏灵魂灯，可能召唤了寻求报复的恶灵。从那一刻起，不寻常的鬼魂事件开始困扰 Thuong 和村民。

　　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.