砂之女

　　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.

由藤井道人执导并编剧、与馆博二度合作的本片《港之光》，以北陆港口小镇为背景，描绘了前黑道成员“大叔”与因事故失去双亲及视力的少年幸太之间跨越十余年的友情。片中，大叔通过“某种方法”筹措资金使幸太重见光明，但彼时大叔已不在身边。成长为青年的幸太相信着“其实大叔曾是刑警”这个小小谎言，如同追逐给予自己光明的憧憬之人般，成为了刑警。馆博饰演化名三浦的“大叔”，歌舞伎界新星尾上真秀首登银幕出演少年幸太，真荣田乡敦诠释青年幸太。

　　故事发生在2050年，蓝小玮是一个研究员，她研发了“零接触”的技术--通过佩戴特殊的头盔，将两个人的脑电波连接起来实现梦境的连接。这天，一个便衣警探余警官找到研究所，要求小玮使用零接触的技术帮他侦破一个极为棘手的案件。小玮觉得这案件跟母亲的昏迷案件有关，尽管知道危险，还是不听父亲的阻止，接受这个任务了。小玮通过网络连接的方式进入昏迷者易田的梦境，随后捣蛋的余警官也偷偷尾随而来，两人在这个奇怪的世界跌跌撞撞，搞笑百出，也危险重重，两人配合警探父亲，终于找到真凶竟然就是实验室的研究员，至此故事告一段落。