Lady in a Cage (1964)

They're trying so hard to make this 60's thriller Hitchcockian, but it just misses. Olivia De Havilland plays the most annoying wealthy woman you could imagine (so much so that you end up siding with the hoods - but more of that in a minute). She completely overacts like (probably) the drama queen she was (as an actress) and the film is held together more by the young James Caan, actually in a lesser role.

It's about this rich woman who annoys everyone she comes into contact with, including her son, who, unknown to her for most of this film, has left her a note upstairs telling her to shove it and that he's off! He leaves the house, she's in the lift (which is a domestic one, hanging in the open) going up to read the note, but never gets there. She's had a hip replacement, I think, for the lift.

There's a power cut and the lift breaks down mid-height. She's trapped (and starts whinging and whining to herself - and the camera, as there is nobody else to show off to)! A tramp happens by, starts to work out what's going on and helps himself to valuables around her - then off to the pawn shop to fuel his need for booze. He has a female friend he ropes in, then they're both at it.

The owner of the pawn shops gets tipped off, so he's in on the act and James Caan and his friends overhear what's happening so the three of them jump in on the action, too! Meanwhile the snooty rich woman dangles in the lobby. I guess she's supposed to be annoying - so in that sense maybe good acting - but it feels like there's too much enjoyment going on for it to be just a show.

Anyway, James Caan's crowd have some time on their own in there so they start to enjoy the facilities of the house too - drinking, eating, bathing, smashing the place up and with all this, the place turns into Piccadilly Circus! It becomes a bit dark when they realise that the woman can identify them all, so they might have to do something permanently with/to her. (At which point the audience is egging them on!)

There is some suspense and (almost) a dark non-Hollywood ending - with messages in the mix about the distribution of wealth in society, but generally, as I say, it's a bit of a miss. Some of the acting (apart from her) is a bit dated/wooden, but generally that is more a sign of the era than bad acting.

You can see very clearly how and where they are trying to make it Hitchcockian, but I guess there's only one Hitchcock! Still kind of enjoyable and very nearly family entertainment for all - maybe not quite. Available on a handful of streaming services at the time of writing.

PodHubUK Podcasts for the Month of March 2025

...a roundup of our month of podcasting. Links to the team, communities and podcast homes on the net at the foot, so scroll down!

Tech Addicts 2025

Season 1 Episode 9 - The Powershot of Love

Sunday 2nd March

Gareth and I battle hangovers to chat about the Canon Powershot V1 and V3, alongside an aluminium vinyl player, Anbernic’s new ROM delivery app, an upcoming tablet from Oppo, a Pixel Penis, Google's Ghost Town, weather reports and another Basement full'o Bargains! Loads more as always so do join us!

Phones Show Chat

Episode 843 - Sony Special
Sunday 2nd March

Keith Bartlett joins Steve and I this week as we dive headlong into lots of Sony stuff and more. MWC is upon us tomorrow, so some thoughts on what HMD have announced already, Clicks for Android, Noreve for classy Cases, Plus a Nothing Phone and Photography itself under the microscope, deal-breakers - and loads more including a POTW from Steve.

Whatever Works

Episode 222 - Aidan's Back Again!
Tuesday 4th March
Aidan suffers but struggles through a recording with me (and then edits it) muttering "the show must go on, luvvie". Loads of stuff as always to feast on including non-alcoholic beer and Air Fried nosh, but no coffee this time - replaced with Fountain Pen talk as we squeeze the Handbrake tube too! Available now from the usual places, so do join us. Wishing Aidan a swift recovery. Poor sod. (No sniggering at the back now!)

Tech Addicts 2025

Season 1 Episode 10 - Mobile Meat

Sunday 9th March

Gareth and I present our Season Finale - the last show until 1st June! We mainly chat about Mobile World Congress 2025 this time. Folding phones from Samsung, TCL have a new NxtPaper tablet, Lenovo is charging ahead with solar, Xiaomi flagship fails to impress, Infinix go tri-fold and loads more - available now in the usual places. Have a nice spring everyone!

The Phones Show Chat Podcast
Episode 844 - Ted's Nothing Week!

Sunday 9th March
Chris Kelly tells us about all his Apple gear this week and how he'd like the firm to go one step further for him! I'm tinkering with the Nothing Phone world, CMF, buds, watch - and Steve has Top Tips, with a Dynamic eye on the iPhone 16e. Oodles more as usual, so do join us for an hour, available in the usual places.

Projector Room

Episode 181 - Gene Hackman Special (RIP)
Wednesday 12th March

Gareth, Allan and I are back once more but sadly, unable to bring you a full-length episode of Projector Room this time due to technical problems, but we did get our act together eventually in time to bring you one of the entries in The Final Curtain section, yes Gene Hackman. So we have a chat about him and his career for a while. Apologies for this, normal service should be resumed (fingers crossed) in two weeks.

The Phones Show Chat Podcast
Episode 845 - Mobile Tech: Officially an Addiction!

Sunday 16th March

Mark Surry joins Steve  and I on this week's show for the first time and we chat to him about all the phones that he's enjoyed and moved on (he's worse than us)! Tons of stuff here including my first impressions of the Sony Xperia 1 Mk VI that Mark sold me, also the Nothing Phone (3a), Steve's revisiting the Gemini and (somehow) appreciating Android's Doze Mode for his Duo! Loads more as always, so do join us for an hour.

The Phones Show Chat Podcast
Episode 846 - Ultra Imaging

Sunday 23rd March

Gavin Fabiani-Laymond joins Steve and I this week and we get a deep-dive on Gav's Xiaomi 15 Ultra and kit, which looks/sounds very interesting. I'm still playing with the Xperia 1 Mk VI and Steve, the Gemini/Cosmo combo. There's a new Pixel announced and some interesting looking new folding hardware - as we take flight from Skype!

Whatever Works

Episode 223 - Hazel's Hysteria!
Tuesday 25th March
Aidan and I are back with another hour's gutter-dredge for your amusement. Or ours. Not sure which sometimes! This time we take the Deep Heat, Roll-On OLights, linger with a Loofah, have a smashing time with car windows, suggest dubious uses for sheet rubber - and oodles more! Do join us, or we'll sulk!

The Phones Show Chat Podcast
Episode 847 - Clumsy Santa!

Saturday 29th March

Last show was the end of the Skype era for Steve and I here on PSC and to Tech Tinker' with Microsoft Teams going forward, we welcome back our Tech Addicts friend Gareth for a natter. Seems to have gone swimmingly. Phew! So yes, we chat about bolt-on keyboards and nuclear batteries(!), I'm trying to live with a Flip Phone again, Gareth's on safe ground with a Sammy and Steve's deep-diving into Sony Photography with the Xperia 1 Mk VI. And loads more. As always!

Bonus Podcast

Ted does the Nomad Tech Project Pod!

Sunday 30th March

Me, for the first time (in decades) on camera! Blimey. It was great to chat with Joe Hickey and Sam Ventimiglia regardless of my ugly mug being plastered all over t'internet! We nattered for just over an hour about all sorts of stuff and, as you might imagine, it was slightly biased towards Moto and Sony! Nice blokes though and we had fun. They do this every Sunday night, live. Scary! But also really interesting to have a live audience who can interact.

The Podcasts

PodHubUK - Phones Show Chat - The Phones Show - Whatever Works - Chewing Gum for the Ears - Projector Room - Tech Addicts

The MeWe Community Groups (follow the links to join up)
Phones Show Chat & The Phones Show - Whatever Works - Chewing Gum for the Ears - Projector Room - PSC Photos - PSC Videos - PSC Classifieds - Tech Addicts

The Team
Ted Salmon - Steve Litchfield - Aidan Bell - Gareth Myles - Allan Gildea

The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024) - A Guest Review by Adrian Brain

With John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush playing complex, well developed characters, my eyes never left the screen watching this very dark but funny film about ageing, disability and dementia.

Set in New Zealand, Geoffrey Rush plays a former high court judge who suffers a stroke and is admitted to a care home for the elderly. He is wheelchair bound but reasonably compos mentis, unlike some of his fellow residents. The Judge is distraught to find he has to share a room with Tony, a former star All Black, who is now only partially mobile and has incontinence problems. 

After an horrific accident, we find out that this care home isn't the safest of places. To cap it all, fully able-bodied but seemingly demented resident Crealy (John Lithgow, imperious), rules the other residents by mental and physical abuse; stealing other residents food, pushing them over, and eventually far worse. In particular, Crealy has it in for Tony and turns up to bully him and the Judge every night. Crealy has a “companion”, an eyeless doll he wears on his hand when he is tormenting - this is the Jenny Pen of the title, and adds an extra layer of menace and cruelty to his actions.

The Judge tries to stop it all by reporting to the staff, but Crealy is too smart to be caught out, so the Judge decides that when he gets out he will bring the full force of the law down on Crealy. Tragically, the Judge is unaware of his own rapid and physical cognitive decline, and is increasingly less able to defend himself from Crealy.

It is a pitch black scenario, the subject of the film being the inability of the elderly and infirm to be properly heard - they are just “managed” as best they can be. Sometimes the intent of the film gets too muddied by the events though. There are some wonderfully surreal moments and some nicely subtle cinematography (watch how the light moves behind Jenny Pen’s eyes), and the film evoked a lot of conversation. My wife was reminded of “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane” and I thought it was like a bleak version of Bubba Ho-Tep, where the elderly were unable to rage against the dying of the light. There are numerous nods to Hitchcock too. The final 15 minutes or so are a bit stop-start though, and it takes an age to fully meet Crealy at the beginning. A re-edit could go a long way to fix these problems.

Rush & Lithgow completely dominate the proceedings, perhaps almost too much, but they also provide the most compelling reason to watch this. Check out the trailer & if it appeals, give it a watch.

Flow (2024) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

Flow (U) is a new animated film directed by Gints Zilbalodis that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the recent Oscars ceremony. Set on a world where all the humans have mysteriously gone. Although signs of their former existence remain in the form of many wooden sculptures of animals dotted around the forest that were obviously carved by an intelligent being.

We see this world through the eyes of a black cat that seems to be wandering aimlessly through these woods but is totally wary of the possible dangers a feline of it's diminutive stature could face. On a particular day searching for food, it encounters a herd of stampeding deer that herald the arrival of a massive flood. Trying it's best to survive and through some random encounters, the cat joins a rag tag band of misfit critters who find an abandoned sailboat and hop aboard to see where the ever rising flow takes them.

First, I've got to say that I'm definitely not a domestic cat person, so feeling empathy for the main protagonist was difficult, but as there was a small diversity of refugees, I managed to feel engaged with their plight.

The animation style is incredibly realistic, including how everything reacts to the ever-moving waters. Obviously the animators have studied how these particular creatures move in great detail but given the fact that they didn't eat much, but appeared to remain amicable with each other as they navigate their ever-changing environment, seemed a bit of a stretch.

This is definitely not a classic Disney-like collaboration of animal characters that viewers of a certain age might remember. Also, there is no dialogue at all. It's just a group of diverse individuals trying to survive an event that's bringing massive change to their environment. So I'm sure this story has been created as an allegory to what the future might hold for our Planet. At 1h 25m long, it's well paced and definitely keeps your attention as the journey unfolds. I found it quite pleasing.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Death and Porridge (2024)

Wow! Llamageddon was low, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was low, but we have a new contender for the badge. This horribly low-budget film is diabolical in every way you could possibly imagine. The acting, the cinematography, (particularly) the sound (which seems was badly dubbed in some scenes but not others), the script, the story - just everything!

It was a bonkers idea by what would appear to be a bunch of students (the actors all have technical job credits too) trying to make a fast buck, I guess, and getting this 82-minute so-called film onto Amazon Prime.

A British group of young people head off for a holiday in the woods in a cottage they have booked but end up in the wrong house - yes, you guessed it, the house belonging to Goldilocks and The Three Bears. Who are actually 4 psychos, one in a cute dress and Goldilocks mask, the others in bear masks. The four of them rock up at the house to take bloody revenge on the intruders, which they do in sadistic fashion. There are a few scenes of (laughable) gore thrown in as they do grizzly (get it?) things to their victims but it's more silly than anything.

I imagine that this group of people have had great fun doing this and hopefully are, as our own Allan Gildea from our Projector Room Podcast would say, seeking an opportunity to create something they can learn from, crap as it may be - and that at least they have got it out there which is tough enough, rather than yes, a rotten cash-grab attempt.

It's so bad that it's worth seeing in order to witness how bad it is, so I'll leave that challenge with you! Actually the best thing about it is the Goldilocks character's actresses stage name - Olga Solo!

Adolescence (2025) - A Guest Review by Adrian Brain

My word! This is the best drama you will see this year. It is one of those programmes that should hopefully affect change in how we raise our kids, even though it studiously avoids trying to provide solutions to the many questions it raises. This Netflix Mini-Series is drama at its very best.

Jamie is a 13-year old kid, whose family home is raided one morning by the police. He is dragged off to the police station, where we find he is accused of the brutal murder of a fellow schoolgirl. By the end of the first episode, we know all of the shocking events that happened, but the remaining 3 episodes investigate why.

Each episode is shot in a single-take, leading to an urgency and immediacy in the acting. Stephen Graham plays the father of Jamie brilliantly and relatably. Jamie is played by newcomer Owen Cooper - and in such a disturbing, complex role, holds the drama together. Erin Doherty, as the child psychologist in episode 3, also deserves a special shout-out, even though the acting is exemplary across the board.

Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne are the writers, the dialog is naturalistic and avoids moralising or trite solutions admirably. They will be surely scooping up the gongs when awards season comes around. It’s good to see Graham getting 'big gun' support too - Brad Pitt is credited as executive producer, for example - though the drama is about as un-Hollywood as you could get.

It’s not quite flawless. For example, in the second episode, set in the kids’ school, the one-shot technique works against the narrative. We discover the chasm between the kids and the teachers, parents and police of what is actually happening on their social media feeds, but the message is disrupted by the constant flow of characters through the school - and an alarm bell of convenience. This is a small gripe however, on what is surely the 'must see' TV of the year.

Prey (2022) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

Set in the Predator Universe, the film 'Prey' came out in 2022. Set in 1719 North America, it follows Naru, (Amber Midthunder) a young Comanche woman living in a small tribe, trying her best to break the stereotype of just being a gatherer like the other females. Instead, like her brother, she wants to prove herself and the tribe, to be an accomplished hunter.

One day, out in the landscape with her trusty canine tracker, she is following a stag when she hears a crack of thunder and witnesses a light in the sky that comes to the ground in the distance. Then later that night she is out with her brother Tabee, (Dakota Beavers) and a handful of other braves trying to kill a cougar that had come onto their usual hunting ground. However, it's not what is stalking them tonight.

This was an interesting twist on a franchise that had definitely gotten repetitive in it's last couple of outings. Director Dan Trachtenberg did a good job of setting this early 18th century, in a part of North America barely touched by the White Man. With the native people still living their uncomplicated lives in balance with Nature in the stunning landscape. Ms Midthunder is definitely the star, is in virtually every scene and I can't really fault her performance. Mr Beavers was also pretty solid. The remaining Native American actors playing the tribal members looked authentic but the other young braves were more like a bunch of Californian surfer dudes in their interactions with each other. Also, it was a bit jarring that they sometimes spoke an indigenous language and then all of a sudden in English.

Part the way through, the siblings encounter a band of French-speaking traders that were typically as arrogant towards them as I guess any White interlopers treated indigenous people's during those pioneering days. All their dialogue was accompanied by only French subtitles, which I thought was a bit weird. Of course we have to mention The Predator. Played by 6'7" former basketball player, Dane DiLiegro, he seemed to have an almost endless array of deadly tech on his scant armour. Regardless, all the various fight choreography against the virtually stone age weapons was done well.

My main gripe is that I would have only liked the viewer to have been aware the alien's presence only when the first tribal member did instead of virtually at the beginning. It just seems to spoil any anticipation of the inevitable encounter. Anyway, the 1h 39m run time is about right and the 15 certificate is warranted due to the graphic nature of how our favourite alien hunter does his thing! Fairly decent popcorn movie which at the moment is free to stream on the All 4 platform at time of writing.