聊斋婴宁 聊齋嬰寧 (1996)

好莱坞明星Reef Hawk（基努·里维斯 饰）被人以一个神秘视频进行勒索，形象和职业面临崩塌，他必须深入探索自己心中隐藏的恶魔。在多年好友Kyle（卡梅隆·迪亚兹 饰）、Xander（马特·波莫 饰）和应对危机的律师Ira（乔纳·希尔 饰）的帮助下，Reef展开了一场自我反省的旅程，要去补偿任何他可能辜负过的人，想搞清楚勒索者是谁。面临自己的过去，才能拯救自己的未来。

　　因童年的玩伴去世，贝丝·潘特森（Gabrielle Anwar 饰）、布莱特·塞克斯（富兰克·威利 Frank Whaley 饰）、珍妮弗·琼斯（迪娜·梅尔 Dina Meyer 饰）、莱尔·戴伊（George Newbern 饰）、金娜·康特（翠希·罗兹 Traci Lords 饰）和韦恩·默瑞森（Dan DeLuca 饰）等6名好友重新聚首。他们曾在一所阴森的孤儿院内长大，并共同拥有着难以忘怀的恐怖回忆。他们在故友的书房内发现留给他们的遗书和地图，按照上面的指示众人来至一处偏僻所在，却在地图标注的地点找到一具高度腐烂的儿童尸体。　　惶恐的众人驱车逃离，然而迷失了来路，最终找到一幢废弃空荡的白色别墅落脚。至此，童年的秘密慢慢揭开，死神的脚步声也越来越近……

　　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.

　　The history of the military operation "Bagration", which took place in August 1944.