金盆洗手

　　春秋战国时期，一向昏庸好色的齐宣王（梅艳芳饰）误闯夜叉山，碰上了美丽的寨主钟无艳（郑秀文饰），齐宣王决定把钟无艳娶为皇后，可是一直倾心于钟无艳的“狐狸精”（张柏芝饰）出手阻挠，只要钟无艳爱上其他的人，脸上便会无缘无故多出一块难看的红斑。狐狸精后来化身夏迎春勾引齐宣王，齐宣王终日沉醉温柔乡。而钟无艳为了夫君出生入死、南征北战。齐宣王只会有事求助于钟无艳时才好言相向。齐宣王十分好赌，竟然把钟无艳作为作为筹码输掉了，钟无艳愤怒离开，脸上红斑也自然消失。夏迎春得逞后也离开了皇宫，齐宣王才发现自己最爱为何人，浪子回头。在受到叛徒攻击时，还是爱着齐宣王的钟无艳，赶到了皇宫，帮忙驱走外敌……

　　尤瑟夫每天都往返于他的农耕村庄巴斯玛和他在耶路撒冷城里的工作之间，满怀热情地努力在瞬息万变的现代世界中寻找自己的位置。他年轻而躁动，更渴望摆脱乡村生活的束缚，而不是被卷入其中的种种烦恼。尤瑟夫的故事与年轻寡妇拉巴布和她的女儿阿芙拉、粗犷的领袖哈立德、鞋匠兼当地神父卡里姆的儿子以及活力四射的都市人胡卢德和她的商人丈夫阿明的故事交织在一起。

　　北印度村庄的两个好友为寻求尊严而竞逐警察职位，但在愈发绝望的追逐中，他们的友谊逐渐崩裂。

　　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.