你第一次見面能走多遠

瑞典魚雷

　　World War II is around the corner, but the only thing Sally Bauer can think of is the ocean. Her dream is to swim across the English Channel. Her father has tried to exorcise her obsession with swimming since she was a toddler, without success. An unwanted pregnancy forces her to abandon her dream – and herself. The child’s father does not want to be involved, so as a woman in the ‘30s in Sweden, Sally has no choice but to do what is expected of her: to be a mother. There is no place left for her dreams and Sally is pulled into bottomless darkness, until her sister Carla saves her. With renewed purpose, together the sisters begin to dismantle the conventions they are constantly facing. In late August 1939, Sally stands on the shore at Dover and takes her first step into the English Channel. She swims across the open and icy sea for 15 hours, waving to the Navy who are readying for war. A couple of days after Sally swims ashore at Calais, Poland is invaded.

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.

宇宙之門

　　全球突然出現了很多來自宇宙巨大的“入口”，世界一片混亂、陷入危機。這些扭曲現實的入口為何出現，它們的另一端是？

人體亂碼

　　Dr Geoff Burton takes up a position at a new institute in wintry Dresden, Germany. His contribution to a former colleague’s important project, a human regeneration gene, has the potential to make something miraculous out of a personal tragedy that has haunted him for years. Errors of the Human Body is a psychological thriller about one man’s quest for redemption from his own disturbing past, set within the mysterious world of genetic engineering.

肖菲勒