芳邻

　　外星人侵占了地球，人们被迫逃到地底下的巨型地堡避难。S.U.M.1是一个忠诚的战士，他被送到地面上来拯救幸存者并每天汇报情况。他的任务就是守卫人类的自我防御区不让外星人靠近，然而这每天的例行任务却逐渐成为他的噩梦，令人恐惧的声音在树林里回荡；基地每日都受到频繁的攻击；塔内的电力供应出现故障；修理工却迟迟不出现。他的上司也从未告诉过他有关上一任的事。孤独感与妄想症慢慢侵蚀了他的理智。难道外星人真的埋伏在森林里吗？还是S.U.M.1已经被折磨到精神错乱了？

　　阿里曾是一位年轻的教师，他辞去了工作，却被父亲无情地赶出了家门。在感到迷茫和孤独之际，他重新找到了旧友，这一举动触发了他一段深刻的自我探索之旅。

　　在被诊断出患有绝症后，克莱尔决定进行最后一次旅行，前往瑞士。在那里，她可以在一家协助自杀协会的帮助下决定如何以及何时结束自己的生命。陪伴她超过四十年的查洛决定与她一同踏上这段单程之旅。与此同时，摩根娜在父母之间以及他们即将离开的所有事物之间成为了一个不情愿的调解人，同时也在努力寻找自己在这个故事中的位置。

　　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.