電話情人

 改編自2020年西班牙電影《多愁善感》。一對結婚多年的夫婦婚姻出了問題，一天碰巧邀請樓上性觀念開放的鄰居來家做客，這一夜充滿意想不到的轉折，逐漸揭示他們內心深處壓抑的情感和未曾探索過的性取向。

　　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.

　　在人類貪婪、誘惑和道德淪喪的深淵中，泰國東北部民間傳說中邪惡的食尸鬼哈貢（Ha Gom）徘徊于文明世界，以人類的脆弱為食。只要貪婪持續存在，食尸鬼便會伺機而動，準備吞噬人類的精神和人性。最大的恐懼或許就是成為你所恐懼的怪物。

　　故事發生在一個電腦科技極為發達的年代，一名科學家發明了一個殺人程序協助警方辦案，其中集結了數百名連環殺手的資料和他們的作案手法。這個程序是如此的邪惡，最后不僅生成了個人意志，更擁有了人類的外表和可以隨時修復任意損傷的特殊能力，它從禁錮中逃脫了出來，在世間作惡。　　為了捕捉這位邪惡的“兇手”，警方設計了一個追蹤儀器，罪犯帕克（丹澤爾·華盛頓 Denzel Washington 飾）被選中成為了儀器的試驗品。帕克曾經亦是一名警察，卻因為動用私刑殺死了讓他家破人亡的殺手而被免除了職務打入大牢。而讓帕克感到在意的是，在殺人程序中，亦有當年殺害他家人的那名殺手的存在。