Relyebo

　　一名年轻美国女子被派往罗马、展开服侍教会的人生，却接触到了令她质疑信仰的黑暗力量，并揭露恶魔转世的可怕阴谋。

　　朱莉娅和莎拉（Belen Rueda 分饰）是一对孪生姐妹，这对美丽的姐妹花正当盛年时却罹患功能退化症。1年前，莎拉的双目完全失明，而朱莉娅的视力也在渐渐减退。某个晦暗之夜，莎拉上吊自杀。冥冥中自有感应，朱莉娅心中备感不安，次日她和丈夫艾萨克（Lluis Homar 饰）驱车赶往妹妹的住所，等待他们的恰是难以置信的噩耗。然而种种迹象表明，莎拉似乎并非自杀身亡，她生前的最后一段时光仿佛有一个神秘的男子作陪。　　朱莉娅尝试着追寻这些蛛丝马迹，她的举止令艾萨克甚为焦躁不安，而种种恐慌也让她的视力加速衰退。在黑暗即将降临的时刻，朱莉娅也隐约感知到一个来去无踪的男子时刻逡巡在自己的身旁……

　　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 son of an African-American Judge is killed by police officers on the day he was set to begin law enforcement academy. When the courts clear the officers of wrongdoing, the Judge must decide whether the courts are the only arbitrators of justice.