枕边物语

　　A Lower East Side bartender becomes entangled in a murder mystery involving a desperate woman, a missing drug dealer and the scion of a powerful investment firm.

　　2005年圣节前3天，电子游戏设计员米正在赶制全新游戏－极乐迷宫，准备在圣诞日推出面大量发售．岂料异变突然发生，游戏里的主角苏被病毒感染产生自主意志，厌倦了打打杀杀无限续局的残酷生涯，要求杰米删除游戏程式，另一边厢，电脑集团又派人催促杰米赶快交货，进退维谷的，他只好兵行险著，策动一场网络革命……

　　大卫（彼得·费辛利 Peter Facinelli 饰）的妻子英年早逝，之后他遇见了名为劳伦（索菲亚·迈尔斯 Sophia Myles 饰）的女子，两人坠入了情网，劳伦让大卫重新找到了人生的希望和目标。大卫和前妻生养了一个女儿取名吉尔（娜塔莉亚·罗蒙丝 Nathalia Ramos 饰），正直叛逆期的她独自居住在哥伦比亚。　　某日，大卫和劳伦踏上前往哥伦比亚的旅途探望女儿，可在途中竟然遭遇了车祸。两人在暴雨之中找到了一间破旧的旅馆栖身，却在无意之中听见旅馆的地下室里传来年轻女孩的呼救之声。正义和道德驱使大卫决定解救这名可怜的女孩，却不知道他的这一行为将在场的所有人推入了万劫不复的深渊之中。

　　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.