大闹广昌隆

地狱无泪

旅行者的需求

　　来自法国的旅行者伊丽丝在韩国担任法语家庭教师赚取生活费。语言的隔阂让她和学生之问的交流充满错位感，东亚文化中不善于思考和表达内心情感的“痼疾"又与渴望交流与开放的心态交织在一起，触发了只有异国旅行者才能感受到的特殊孤独与惆怅。被誉为韩国作者电影第一人的导演洪常秀继《在异 国》《克莱尔的相机》之后与法国国宝级女演员伊莎贝尔·于佩尔再度合作，用极简主义的拍摄手法呈现细致入微的人际关系精妙互动，斩获2024年第74届柏林国际电影节评审团银熊奖。

志愿军：浴血和平

　　电影《志愿军》三部曲系列终章《志愿军：浴血和平》聚焦抗美援朝第五次战役后直至签署停战协议期间“边打边谈”的作战历程。前线战斗血火交锋，谈判桌上唇枪舌剑，面对敌人的一再挑衅，中华儿女合力反击，誓要奉陪到底，经过747天的抵死奋战，终于打破了美军不可战胜的神话，搏来了期盼已久的和平。

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.