一屋三户

恐怖回音

　　安娜·帕克（凯特·法兰奇 Kate French 饰）是一个美丽的女作家，当下她正为新书做最后的冲刺，可是担任出版编辑的男友保罗·瓦格纳（史蒂文·布兰德 Steve Brand 饰）却提出了较为尖刻的修改意见。心情颇有些低落的安娜找不到灵感，创作陷入僵局。为了帮她完成工作，保罗将安娜带到一处位于沙漠中央的别墅进行创作，不过他突然有事离开，只留下安娜和一条狗。到了夜晚，安娜惊讶地发现有一个恐怖的人逡巡在别墅附近。她尝试着向保罗求助，然而无法得到有效回应。　　2012-3-2，一组奇怪的数字，让安娜陷入前所未有的恐惧之中。而在无尽的恐慌中，她终于发现了可怕的秘密……

等待方舟

　　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.

无敌当家4

逆转劫局

　　焦急的母親菈葵兒（艾瑪蘇雷茲飾演）到銀行借錢，她必須在24小時內籌到35000歐元（約新台幣130萬元），否則她將再也見不到心愛的女兒。經過不斷懇求，銀行終於同意借款給她救急。不料在貸款手續快要完成之時，兩個蒙面搶匪闖入銀行，不但搶走所有錢，就連在場所有顧客與行員都成為人質。在分秒必爭的險境當中，菈葵兒決定無論付出什麼代價，都一定要拿到這筆錢全身而退…。究竟她該如何保住性命？又該如何籌錢保住女兒呢？