冷酷之女：吟声阵阵

没钱没爱还没心没肺的马腾（林更新 饰）人近中年一事无成，是旁人眼里公认的“废柴”！钢厂退休骨干老林（李幼斌 饰）遵守铁打的纪律活了一辈子本该安享晚年，身体和心理却双双“亮起红灯”！本无生活交集的两人因为一场歪打正着的护工面试相遇，展开了一段啼笑皆非的有趣互救。老林为求解脱，将“协助自杀”的希望寄托在这个不靠谱的护工身上。马腾虽然想赚钱完成女儿的心愿，但无胆害命，只能发挥自己的乐观心态在日常中提供情绪价值给老林。二人在一段特殊的旅途中建立起生死友谊，于病痛与死亡的阴影里找到了活下去的小小微光，携手大胆迎接未知的生活。

　　故事发生在大约200年前的越南阮朝，探子阿坚受某村庄的邀请，前来调查神秘失踪的案子....

　　奥赛罗（谢尔盖·邦达尔丘克 Sergei Bondarchuk 饰）是骁勇善战的大将军，元老的女儿苔丝狄蒙娜（伊琳娜·斯科布采娃 Irina Skobtseva 饰）爱上了他，但因为奥赛罗是一名黑人，所以两人的婚事遭到了元老的反对。不愿意就此放弃这段感情的两人决定私定终身，这个秘密被一直嫉妒奥赛罗的旗官伊阿古（安德烈·波波夫 Andrei Popov 饰）给暗中偷听到了，于是伊阿古决定破坏这段姻缘。哪知道伊阿古的捣乱反而促成了这段婚事。　　伊阿古并没有善罢甘休，奥戴罗和苔丝狄蒙娜结婚之后，伊阿古通过伪造定情信物的手段开始挑拨这对夫妻之间的感情。占有欲极强的奥赛罗很快就走进了伊阿古设置的圈套之中。

　　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.