Hijack 1971 (2024)

This Korean hostage-taking/hijack drama is based on a true story, but it apparently takes some creative liberties for dramatic purposes. While the core elements of the hijacking and the pilot's actions are factual, some characters and events have been fictionalised.

We join the story in 1969 when a South Korean military pilot is removed from service following an incident when he failed to shoot down a passenger airliner as it was heading from South to North Korea, apparently hijacked, caring more for the wellbeing of the people onboard than following orders and considering the longer-term implications of North Korea and impact on extended families involved of not doing so.

We then jump forward two years to 1971 and our man has got a job as a commercial pilot and is operating as First Officer on the flight in question under the watch of the aircraft's captain. Some way into the flight, a man pops up with some home-made looking grenade/bombs and threatens to bring the plane down, killing them all, unless they fly him to North Korea so that he can defect - and he thinks, get rich. The back-story of the lone hijacker is apparently in question, but for our purposes it's rooted in the dubious activities at the time of the South Korean authorities, treating people's families as potential spies if they, or anyone they knew, had been in North Korea for any reason.

So anyway, the hijacker is now in control of the plane and we join the various members of the crew and passengers as they do what they can, obviously frightened for their lives, tense and anxious, to work towards overpowering him. The hijacker punishes anyone who is seen by him to be scheming against his action/plan which brings more tension and anxiety to the proceedings. And it does this part of the film very well. It's edge-of-the-seat stuff and the 1 hour 40 minute run time well, flies!

What's not so convincing is much of the 'special' effects of the plane in flight and backdrop which is, at times, almost laughably poor! But OK - it's clearly a low-budget outing and because the rest of it is pretty gripping, these scenes can be overlooked. The drama, suspense and tension are handled really well by the director and cast members. The secondary story about our pilot putting people before everything else and paying a huge price, is played out well as we see him put himself into risky situations time and again.

As usual with these kinds of dramas, knowing that it was a true story, well, even mostly true, adds great interest and enthusiasm to digest what's brought to the screen. There are plenty of stunts inside the cabin to watch and, again, these have been shot well. So, full of action, but also moving, especially during the end credits when we get real footage of the aftermath in Korea of the plane, the outcomes and information about our key pilot chappie. Well worth a watch, now streaming on a few services.

Heretic (2024)

It's an unsettling psychological thriller. Keep on your toes! Two mormon girls, driven to scoop new converts at (almost) any cost, get their comeuppance when they call on the sinister but suave Hugh Grant as Mr Reed in his quirky house full of passageways, traps and surprises!

All's going well as he engages with them about their belief and starts to challenge them, delving into where their faith runs out and what the meaning of belief and reality really is. He starts to play persuasive mind games and physical games, trapping them further and further towards anxiety, panic, paranoia - and mistrust in what they thought were their truths.

The film explores the historic basis of religion, and how people are obsessed, and as we venture further in and the games get more complex and shocking, trying to work out where the line is between reality and what might be presented as illusion. Grant is clearly having great fun with the role as he slips effortlessly between being charming into disturbing, sinister and manipulative!

There's loads of tension throughout as the story starts off dialogue-based, word-play and questions aplenty but then starts to build in the sinister edge, heading towards it's gripping, but fun, finale. I'm sure, like me, the running time will fly - no clock watching here!

Apart from Grant's very nice performance, the two girls do a good job, Sophie Thatcher and Cloe East, able to express initially confidence and later shock, vulnerability and horror! The horrific stuff serves to add a super haunting, eerie atmosphere, shot nicely in terms of imagery alongside supportive sounds and music.

It's an unsettling film but certainly worth a watch, great entertainment and might serve to get religious people questioning the stuff they blindly believe in. Or perhaps not, actually - more likely think it's just silly! Now streaming on a couple of platforms for you to use your vouchers/points on - or go to the cinema!

Touch (2024)

An incredibly moving film from Baltasar Kormákur behind the lens and holding the pen. It's a story set in two eras, 50 years apart. The early 1970's London and present day Japan. It follows the path of Kristófer who back in the day is a student in London, having relocated from his native Iceland. He's politically active and mixed up in the communism banter kicking about at the time and we see him with a group of other students attending a rally/protest or two.

This is all soon left behind, however, as he gets fed up with his studies and decides instead to get a job, opportunistically, in a Japanese restaurant in London - as he happens to be passing and sees a Wanted sign. He heads on in, nails the job, gets on very well with the Japanese family who run it and starts off as Chief Dishwasher! As he gets his feet under the table, he moves up, learns to speak and write Japanese along with the culinary art of cooking/preparing their style of food.

Then we get introduced to Miko, the owner's daughter and it becomes clear, even though she has a boyfriend (who her dad disapproves of), that they have fallen for each other. So we enter the phase of the film which is very much a classic love story with the introduction of different cultural values, approaches to relationships, generational differences and so on, in a climate where in the West at least, young people are expecting to be more free from tradition, conservatism and to make their own decisions/choices.

Part of the film is also about foodie stuff, for sure - there's some great photography (colourful too) going on from the kitchen with sumptuous food being prepared and presented - but that's not the primary hit here. It's much more about the two in love and the modern day Kristófer heading off to Japan to find Miko. Yes, there's a tragic element to the flashback to earlier times in which Miko, her dad and everyone else, just disappear one day. Gone. There are a couple of poignant moments ahead of that, which Kristófer tries to piece together as he's left completely alone.

Distraught, but with no clues as to where to turn (particularly in the pre-internet age and easy communication opportunities), two lives are formed. Kristófer marries, but the narrative clearly demonstrates that he's never happy in that, his wife dies, they have a daughter (who hounds him in the present) and we, the viewer, don't really know what's happened to Miko until very late on.

The backdrop of the present is also the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, so the start of this decade, as masks are being worn, travel restricted and lockdowns about to be executed. Present day Kristófer finds himself in Japan however, with the goal of seeking out his long-lost love and trying to find out what happened to her and her family back in the day. I won't spoil any outcomes relating to that.

There's also a theme running through the film about Hiroshima and the impact of that on the Japanese family, Miko's mum and why they all ended up in London. There's also yet another theme going on about ageing, memory loss, dementia and the impact on humans of the passing of time. As you can see, there's fairly intricate threading going on, but not so much as to lose the audience. The seamless leaps between present day and 1970's is clear because of how the main characters look and have aged, not through any obvious captioning or other method.

The first thing that struck me about the film was the lovely music - mostly stinged orchestral, which is just delightful. It supports the emotional aspects of the story, the chemistry between the two of them and ends of being decidedly moving - though far from soppy. It's been handled beautifully. It's also acted superbly by the whole cast, none of whom I knew I'm afraid - and many seemingly fairly inexperienced. Highly recommended film.

Aporia (2023)

This is a tidy little kind-of time-travel sci-fi/drama/fantasy. Not quite sure where to place it amongst all that, but it has certainly bits of it all! It’s all a bit far-fetched but very nicely presented, with a kind-of low-budget/Indie-feel, headed up by director Jared Moshe.

We join the story eight months after Sophie’s husband Mal has been killed in a drink-drive incident. She and their daughter are struggling to get along together without him, their lives full of grief and difficulties. Before he died, Mal had a good friend Jabir, and because they were a pair of boffin-nerds interested in physics and science, had a plan to build a time machine!

This was no ordinary time machine though - rather than transporting people into the past or future, it became able to send a packet of energy to a specific location at a specific time, to kind-of explode! Don't ask me to explain any more about the science! Jabir, seeing the state that Sophie was in and her crumbling relationship with her and Mal’s daughter, Riley, continues to work on the machine without Mal being around.

When Jabir finally thinks that he has something of a working theoretical model, he talks to Sophie about it and explores the possibility of sending back a packet of energy to eliminate the drunk-driver before he mows down Mal. She laughs it off initially, but as he says to her in the end - what has she got to lose! She visits the house of the drunk-driver and sees that he’s a nasty man who is abusive towards his family and still a drunk. In the end, she agrees, on the basis that the world (and his family) can do without such a bad person, replacing it with a good one - she getting Mal back and to restore her family.

I’ll stop with the plot there as anything else would be a giveaway. Needless to say, not everything is quite as it seems. Consequences of changing the past, even tiny bits of it - like removing one person - have far-reaching effects which had not been thought through or realised. Scientific experimentation - testing the theories by just getting on and trying it out!

There’s much fallout following the event, which is certainly thought-provoking and interesting to follow through with the very good cast. The three main players, Judy Greer (The Village), Edi Gathegi (For All Mankind) and Payman Maadi (A Separation) do an excellent and convincing job, turning on the drama, emotion and anxiety when called upon to do so in this evolving and ultimately complex plotline. For some (like me) it might be a case of keeping up at the back! It’s an enjoyable sci-fi romp and well worth a look, now streaming on limited platforms.

Aniara (2019)

Aniara is a book-length Swedish sci-fi poem (1956) by Harry Martinson on which this film is based. I haven't read the book/poem but according to Wikipedia it narrates the tragedy of a large passenger spacecraft (Aniara) carrying a cargo of colonists escaping destruction on Earth, veering off course, leaving the Solar System and entering into an existential struggle. The style is symbolic, sweeping and innovative for its time, with creative use of neologisms to suggest the science fictional setting.

I'm sure that, given the above, much of the artistic and scientific depth will have been lost on me, so I shall just give a brief summary of what I thought, what I enjoyed, approaching it without knowing or understanding that backdrop! It is indeed a story of a huge number of people on a huge spaceship leaving the earth behind as we are given glimpses of how earth has been destroyed at some future date, not specified. The human race needs to find a new home. So our huge spaceship, stacked full of people, is supposed to be on a 3-week long trip to Mars, but something goes wrong, the captain has to ditch the fuel and the spaceship is meandering off into no-man's-land.

There's some lovely imagery created with a relatively meagre budget - the 'lifts' taking people from earth to the Aniara for example - most of the special effects do look pretty low-budget, but also somehow good/interesting. I have read that the film's sets were not made/created by the filmmakers but unused shopping centres, car-parks and cross-channel ferries were used instead, thus cost-saving. And when you know that, you can see it very clearly.

We follow some of the staff/crew mainly, and in particular one lady who is in charge of MIMA, a bizarre 'service' which enables people to lay flat on the floor with their head in a foam-looking face protector whilst above and around them, MIMA creates images in their minds of calming, lovely scenes back on earth before is had been destroyed, reading their minds, personalising it for each individual. So typically waterfalls and isolated lakes etc.

Our crew members are depicted as a typical cross-channel ferry crew or airliner staff, pretty much bored of the routine of shuttling people from the earth, just a job, novelty and fascination worn off. Even during the 'lift' service from earth up to the ship, fascinating as it would be, they are not even bothering to look out of the window, just sleeping.

Lost in space, I'm not quite sure why they couldn't be rescued and communicate with earth, but perhaps it's to do with the sheer size and numbers. Perhaps there was only one of these spaceships. Anyway, the captain tells the travellers about the catastrophe and says that they are going to slingshot around a planet and get back on course, but that the process will take 2 years. Shock/horror - nobody can believe it - but they just have to accept it. They're growing some algae in a farm on the ship which appears to be likely to feed everyone, on a basic level, pretty much indefinitely. And strangely, the alcohol doesn't seem to run out very quickly!

Our MIMA lady shares a cabin with another crew member who is clearly depressed, negative and nihilistic about mankind, life, the universe and pointlessness of existence. Furthermore, she has inside-knowledge (which she shares via the bottom of a bottle of spirits) about the fact that the people have been lied to about the 2 years and it's going to be nothing of the sort - they are lost, hopelessly drifting in space forever. MIMA gets overloaded with people's negative thoughts and creates a secondary catastrophe of its own ending up with people resorting to bizarre behaviours, creating cults, shedding clothing, repopulating with each other openly and more as they all despair, realising, one-by-one, the hopelessness of their situation and existence.

There's so much to unpack here that I don't stand a chance really covering anything like all of it. Best to watch it and/or read the book/poem and make up your own mind about what it's saying about the insignificance of human existence, hopelessness, meaning, the frailty of planet earth, the infinite, bleak nature of space in terms of human acceptance/understanding and do hang about for the finale as we're exposed to a powerful and soul-stirring conclusion. Yes, there are scientific inconsistencies, but lay that aside and get stuck into it as-is. It's subtitled (or I guess you might find dubbing) and available now via various streaming services. Well worth a mind-bending watch.

PodHubUK Podcasts for the Month of November 2024

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

Phones Show Chat
Episode 826 - Special Edition Incoming
Saturday 2nd November
Steve and I are here with a catchup show during which we unusually talk about quite a bit about recent tech news, run through the highlights of my HMD Skyline review, nerd-out on potential ROM-baking action, consider alternative cases - and a bunch more besides!

Whatever Works
Episode 215 - Sicilian Sausages!
Monday 4th November
Aidan and I are back with another compendium of compelling content, curtly cheap as chips, to compromise your comprehension! (He says, keeping away from the letter S!) We scoff a Phal with a Spork, cook some 8-year old eggs, alarm ourselves with volume issues, drill our porcelain pushbikes at Esso and loads more chaos like that! Do join us for an hour, available now in the usual places 🤩

Phones Show Chat
Episode 827 - New York Pixel Decision
Sunday 10th November
Steve and I welcome Andy Hagon back for a natter for an hour about all things mobile phone - and find out what he's been using and thinking, about the latest tech. Mike Warner drops in (virtually!) to explain again about Google's soft/firmware Play elements, I have a look at the budget Moto G85 and Steve's (mostly) loving the Nokia N93 in Bygone Beauties.

Projector Room
Episode 174 - An Alien Substance
Wednesday 13th November
Gareth, Allan and I are back again with a look at the stuff we've been watching blended with your stuff too. We Blitz the Living Dead, Kidnap Spiders on the 3rd Rock as we focus on William Shatner, p...p...pick up The Penguin as he Wolfs around with The Substance and even end up as Aliens in the Romulus lab. Loads of fun as always, so do join us!

Phones Show Chat
Episode 828 - Samsung and Apple Realisations
Sunday 17th November
Steve and I are joined this week by Zachary Kew-Denniss so we find out what he's been up to in the last 2 years, since he last chatted with us. Mostly Android/Samsung but has dabbled for a month with iOS. I'm looking forward to more Samsung stuff arriving and Steve's busy sorting out the Surface Duo with Android 15. Loads more, as always so do join us for a while.

Whatever Works
Episode 216 - Single Jingle Mingle!
Monday 18th November
Aidan and I are back once more with our fortnightly hour of trinkets, linklets and sprinklets for your delight and trauma! From Scarlett Socks and Oral Orbitkeys, Nappa bags and Turtle Wax to CrossCountry Casio, Cats and coffee - it's all here and oodles more! Available now in the usual places, so do join us! Whatever Worked, Works!

Phones Show Chat
Episode 829 - The Pixel 9 Pro Fold Arises
Sunday 24th November
Steve and I are joined this week by Shane Craig, so as you'd imagine, we delve into all things folding/flipping, new and old. We chat about Google's plans for Android/ChromeOS, Desktop Modes, new and old, and oodles more! Available now from the usual places. Stay Nerdy, My Friends!

Projector Room
Episode 175 - The Jackal and the Joker
Wednesday 27th November
Gareth, Allan and I are back again with another of our fortnightly roundups of all things film, cinema and TV. This time we get Exposed to an Indecent Proposal, Say Nothing (much) about Gladiator II, Flopalopolis with Megalopolis and become the only podcast in the world to speak warmy of Joker: Folie à Deux! Loads of other chat and banter as usual, so do join us!

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

Owning Mahowny (2003)

This is an excellent film directed by Richard Kwietniowski depicting the true story of Dan Mahowny, a Canadian bank employee with an addiction to gambling. Put the two together and you can see where this likely goes, even if you don't know the story from the early 1980s from the news back then.

Philip Seymour Hoffman carries the film and is in pretty much every frame of it as the Dan, struggling with his addiction and financial woes. We follow Dan closely as he weedles around within his job, smartly defrauding the bank and its customers of large sums of money, then gambling it away, paying off debts, winning loads in a lucky streak at two casinos, then losing it again, as addicted gamblers are likely to do.

In amongst all that there's a dedicated girlfriend, firstly catching on to what's happening - as he makes excuse after excuse about why he's not around for her or any kind of life outside of his work. Then, hoping Dan will wake up and recognise what's happening to him before the world closes in on him and it's too late. She, Belinda, is played nicely by Minnie Driver, though she's not in the film for a great amount of time.

John Hurt plays the manager of one of the casinos very nicely too as we follow him. Firstly overjoyed that a big spender is losing all his money, getting concerned that he's then going off to Las Vegas instead of to his establishment, then anxious as Dan starts to win big in his casino, his boss breathing down his neck in turn - and also as the suave host, pampering and tending to the wishes of, or at least trying to, one of his big spending customers.

The supporting cast do a fine job as well with some humour often thrown in. One character is Dan's small-time money lender suddenly out his depth as things take off - and also a particular employee of the casino jumping around trying hard to show Dan the error of his ways. There's a tapestry of characters and situations which Dan is holding at arm's length as he orchestrates his rise and fall. The 100 minutes or so fly past, for some of it I was perched on the edge of my seat as I felt Dan's stress!

As time goes on he steals more and more, learns very quickly how to cover his tracks, survives a bank audit by quick thinking and confidence tricks and keeps a low profile by dressing shabbily and keeping his old clapped out car. It's almost as if he really isn't interested in the money per-se but rather the process of the gambling. And I guess that's the point. He's sometimes abrupt and rude to people around him, including the long-suffering Belinda, but in a quiet, reserved way, encouraging people to trust him and think the best of him as he covers his tracks.

It's really nicely shot - the camera often lingers on close-ups of Dan's face in amongst all the stress, anxiety and mayhem. There's an explainer during the end credits letting the viewer know what happened to Dan after the end of the film, for those who don't know, and the outcomes are not really that straight forward either. So perhaps if you don't know the truth of it all, read up afterwards and enjoy the thriller/character study of a man in turmoil as-is. Recommended. It's not on streaming services that I could find just now but it's not a new film so second-hand DVDs are your friend. I saw it in CeX for £2.50 today.