La Querida

　　艾瑞克经营一家摩托车修理店，和自己的女朋友以及她的年幼女儿幸福的生活在一起，然而这种平静的生活被一个名叫亨利的陌生人打破了，艾瑞克过去的黑暗秘密阴影开始笼罩这个家庭。我们真的可以完全告别过去吗？我们可能已经改变了，但是有些过去的行为却继续如影随行。　　在《立体声》中，一个男人充满热血、没有丝毫胆怯的赎罪行为让我们印象深刻。

1956年匈牙利革命后，一个男孩从小被母亲灌输了关于已故父亲的理想化故事，却突然遇到一个粗野的男人，对方声称自己是他的亲生父亲。

在知名补习班里，流传着一个恐怖传言：只要在深夜走上被封锁的四楼，填写桌上的报名表，写下上榜的愿望，不论再困难的考试与科系，都能如愿考取。资优生贝儿与好友们前去试胆，愿望竟奇迹般一一成真，却伴随着接连不断的离奇死亡。肩负母亲对医学院的期待，贝儿也在名单上留下自己的名字，自此怪事频频缠身；姐姐精神逐渐崩溃，弟弟贝斯为救她挺身而出，决心以自己的名字改写命运。随着真相逐渐揭开，他们赫然发现四楼深埋的秘密，竟与一段骇人师生往事紧紧相连……当对考试的渴望仰赖超自然力量，而这种成功却要以生命为代价时，是毕业，还是毙命？他们能够在疯癫的教育体制内活下来吗？

　　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.