深色調的愛麗絲 Darker Shades of Elise (2017)

　　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.

在她18歲生日那天，堅強的女孩喬尼吃了一個由她的阿姨根據一個神奇的家庭食譜烤的蛋糕，并經歷了一個徹底的變形。隨著幾個同學失蹤，一個血腥的成長故事發生了。

艾娃是一位受人歡迎的教師，她的丈夫是當地的市長。盡管他背叛了她的信任，她仍然計劃支持他的競選活動，因此她開始在當地的一個難民中心做志愿者。在這里，她與18歲的難民阿米爾親近起來，他的詩歌才華深深吸引了她。然而，他們越走越近，她對局勢的掌控就越少。這部關于禁忌之愛的戲劇《別叫我媽媽》讓主角們面臨道德考驗，同時挑釁性地探討了虛偽如何偽裝成慷慨。充分利用了自己作為選角導演的經驗，尼娜·克納格從演員皮婭·蒂耶塔、克里斯托弗·約納和塔雷克·扎亞特那里得到了出色的表現。

　　Check out the trailer for The Beast Within, an upcoming movie starring Kit Harington, Ashleigh Cummings, James Cosmo, and Caoilinn Springall.　　After a series of strange events leads her to question her family’s isolated life on a fortified compound deep in the English wilds, 10-year-old Willow follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of the ancient forest. But upon witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestral secret they’ve tried so desperately to conceal.　　The Beast Within is produced by Merlin Merton, Martin Owen, Ryan Hamilton, Karl Hall, Sebastian Street, Alex Chang, Jack Christian, Evan Ross, Jordan Wagner, and Ying Ye. It is written by Greer Taylor Ellison and Alexander J. Farrell.　　The Beast Within, directed by Alexander J. Farrell, opens in theaters nationwide on July 26, 2024.