Happening (2021)

This French film, originally entitled L'événement, was directed by Audrey Diwan and based on Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical 2000 novel. It provides a raw look at reproductive rights in 1960s France when abortion was strictly illegal - a crime that carried mandatory prison sentences for both the patient and anyone who assisted.

Shot in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio with a handheld, shoulder-mounted camera following our central character Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) continuously, the visual style creates a claustrophobic, immediate sense of isolation and panic. Anne comes from a working-class background (her parents run a rural bar/café). Higher education is her single ticket to social mobility and independence. The patriarchal legal and medical systems of the day place the full burden of pregnancy - and the punishment for unwanted pregnancies - on young women, while men remain exempt from consequences.

It's very sad for Anne, as she is a brilliant literature student at university with a promising academic career. We are shown how she is clearly ahead of her classmates in study as those around her flounder often. So, after realising that her period is late, she checks her calendar obsessively. She visits a local doctor, who confirms she is pregnant. When she begs him for help terminating it, he coldly refuses, reminding her that it is illegal.

In desperation, she seeks out a second doctor in the city who appears more sympathetic. He prescribes her an injection, claiming it will induce a miscarriage, but for reasons that come out later, it doesn't work. As the weeks pass, depicted in chapter captions, Anne’s academic performance deteriorates due to exhaustion, worry and stress. When she attempts to ask her close dorm friends, Brigitte and Hélène, for assistance in finding help, they shut her down instantly. Helping her could land them in prison, leaving Anne entirely isolated.

She meets up with Maxime, the child's father, who is indifferent and expects her to deal with the "problem" alone so it doesn't affect his equally-ambitious life. Another male classmate, Jean, promises to help, only to turn around and proposition her for sex, reasoning that since she's already pregnant, there’s "no risk". Driven to extremities, Anne locks herself in her room, heats a knitting needle over a flame and attempts a self-administered back-alley procedure. The painful attempt fails completely.

Jean eventually introduces Anne to a female acquaintance who had successfully obtained a clandestine abortion. She gives Anne the contact details for a back-street abortionist (a faiseuse d'anges/'angel maker') named Mme Rivière. Anne sells her books, clothes and personal belongings to scrape together the required 400 francs. She travels to Mme Rivière’s small apartment. On a kitchen table, the woman gets to work and we, the audience, are right up close with her as it's being done. Complications set in and another visit is needed.

Anne lives in a students' residential block at the educational establishment where all the facilities are shared by the girls - including very open showering. In letting the viewer in on so much nudity, I guess the film is depicting not only the lack of control that the state imposes regarding the above, but also the lack of common dignity and privacy imposed on these girls in a shared facility.

We stick with Anne as she goes through agonising procedures and the intense, bloody aftermath of that in her bedroom and communal bathroom. Again, nothing is left to the imagination and what happens is graphically portrayed on film. Even if she is successful in getting rid of the foetus, the next step is getting a doctor to 'mark it down' as a spontaneous miscarriage rather than an illegal abortion, for which she would face immediate prosecution and jail.

What we end up with here is almost documentary - the reality of what young women went through in the 1960s. Because the handheld camera sits practically on Vartolomei’s shoulder, the scale of performance had to be suitably contained. Diwan noted that when a lens is that close, even a micro-expression or a small smile looks massive on screen. Rather than relying on a heavy musical score to build tension, she used Vartolomei’s actual breathing patterns like a musical rhythm to signal Anne's plight. The film won the Golden Lion at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in 2021 by a unanimous jury vote (headed by Bong Joon-ho) and Vartolomei’s turn as Anne earned her the César Award for Most Promising Actress and the Lumières Award for Best Actress.

It's a harrowing watch in many ways, a real fly-on-the-wall drama, sadly based on truth. Without spoiling the outcomes for anyone wanting to track this down, on various streaming platforms in the UK now, it's often moving and sad. We're really encouraged to get onside with Anne and feel the stress, anxiety and pain that she does. The supporting cast are very good as well, not a poor actor on display throughout. Certainly worth tracking down if you are up for the no-holds-barred graphic depictions highlighting the story's elements or the social and religion-based controls of the day.

The Fairphone (Gen. 6+)

Fairphone is a company that continues to comfortably defy industry standards. While the rest of the smartphone world pushes sealed glass sandwiches, non-replaceable batteries and planned obsolescence, Fairphone remains committed to fair trade sourcing, eco-friendly manufacturing, modular repairability and long-term support.

Now we have the Fairphone 6+. Priced at £570 for a base 256GB storage configuration (with MicroSD expansion up to 2TB), it raises an immediate question: what makes it a "Plus"? Well, this isn't a total redesign over the base Fairphone 6 launched last year. Instead, it addresses key quality-of-life bottlenecks. The RAM gets a much-needed boost to 12GB of LPDDR5 (up from 8GB), designed to ensure smooth multi-tasking through Android 16 all the way to Android 22 without performance degradation or app redraws. Silicon shifts to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4, and it comes in a striking new Cobalt Blue colour. Many commentators will argue it looks overpriced feature-for-feature against mainstream mid-rangers. Purely on a spec-to-price ratio, that’s fair. But you aren't just paying for silicon. You’re paying for living-wage bonuses for factory workers, 51% recycled/fairmined materials by weight, 100% e-waste neutrality, a 5-year hardware warranty and guaranteed spare parts availability straight through to 2033. The payoff is longevity.

Visually, Fairphone has succumbed to the prevailing trend of copying Apple: flat, squared-off aluminium-style edges and a distinct camera cluster layout. It looks modern, but it loses a bit of that unique personality earlier Fairphones carried. The frame and back cover are built from recycled plastic blends. In the hand, it presents a very strange sensory experience. It is noticeably slippery, but more curiously, whenever you touch it, your fingers come away feeling oddly "dry" - as if the casing is actively wicking moisture out of your skin. Apparently, it's to do with thermal effusivity, lipid shearing and micro-adhesion. Look all that up if you're a scientist - or, like me, opt for a nice soft TPU case in the old-fashioned way!

The volume buttons sit on the left side. For right-handed users holding the device in their left hand, this is ergonomically spot-on - your left thumb sits right over the controls. The right edge houses the combined power button and capacitive fingerprint scanner, which works quickly and reliably (complemented by snappy face unlock). The volume and power buttons are colour-coded to the chassis. Our PR review unit came in that aforementioned Cobalt Blue - a bright, distinctive shade that verges on purple. The dedicated physical Moments key sits on the right, finished in bright yellow. It protrudes slightly, making it simple to find by feel alone.

If, like me, you already own a Fairphone 5 or are choosing between the two generations, the 6+ is a story of notable hardware upgrades coupled with a few unexpected regressions. Moving to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM up from 8GB is useful, especially as some had been saying that the 6, under load with many apps, was not performing quite as well as it could. The Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 is clearly more capable than the FP5's Qualcomm QCM6490 - though that was an industrial chipset specially designed for longevity, which even now could mean the 5 receives support for longer than the 6 or 6+.

Fairphone altered their core repair strategy here. On the Fairphone 5, inserting a MicroSD card or swapping the battery meant popping the back cover off with a fingernail and lifting the cell out. On the 6+, there is a standard pokey-hole SIM card tray on the bottom that houses both the Nano-SIM and MicroSD card. It makes hot-swapping cards far easier. However, the 4,415mAh battery inside the 6+ is now secured by Torx T5 screws. While it maintains an iFixit 10/10 rating (battery swaps take under 5 minutes - in theory), you can no longer pull a spare battery out of your pocket and swap it mid-day without a screwdriver.

First things first: get yourself a decent Torx screwdriver before you start this job! Even with a good screwdriver, frankly, this is not a job I could give to Joe Public to do. I took it all apart - even taking the screen off (though I stopped short of the camera module, which looked even more like a job for someone in a repair booth), along with the speaker and USB-C assembly - and yes, it’s all possible. But this is not a job I’d give to even my non-techy sister to do, let alone my elderly dad. You have to be incredibly methodical with the plethora of screws of different colours and sizes, making sure you remember (or make a note of) which came from where in order to get it all back together properly, not to mention following the correct sequence for reassembly. On putting it back together, I ended up taking the battery back off three times because the top section was not put back in the right sequence (one part sits at a higher 'level' in the assembly than the other). Then I realised the flap covering the battery’s ribbon cable was missing - I found it on the floor - so I had to take the whole top section off again to ensure that flap was sitting in the right place under the top cover before placing it down. Then there was remembering to ensure the battery’s ribbon is reattached to the port before closing it down - and finally putting the back cover on.

I honestly conclude that unless a person is going to be doing this regularly, trying to do it as a one-off to replace a failed camera module requires them to be exceptionally methodical and focused - making notes and keeping the decks clear. Furthermore, you need a proper Torx screwdriver, not a fiddly set, as that will only add to the frustration. Someone with a background in playing with Meccano sets as a child might be fine here, but for Joe Public, I’d suggest getting someone down at the local watch shop or jewellers to do it - with the possible exception of a battery replacement. Just about. But you still have to navigate that ribbon cable and protective flap. Resourceful folk will no doubt watch Fairphone’s videos and walkthroughs before tackling the job - much like I have to do every time the "clean" light comes up on my coffee machine! But seriously, when I look back at my trusty Fairphone 5, I weep at how complicated the 6 and 6+ have made this process. The 5 is a simple delight to work with in comparison. Still, it is commendable that they have made full disassembly possible - I just think it could have been achieved more simply with a simpler phone design.

One genuine disappointment is that the 6 and 6+ have lost the DisplayPort/HDMI-Out capability over USB-C that was present on the Fairphone 5. Fairphone clearly deemed video output a niche feature not worth board routing on this redesigned chassis, but power users moving from the FP5 will miss it.

The front of the phone features a 6.31" LTPO AMOLED display (1116 × 2484, 431 ppi) protected by Gorilla Glass 7i. It supports variable 10–120Hz refresh rates, PWM dimming at 1440Hz under low brightness and specialised wet-finger/glove tracking. In daily operation, scrolling is buttery smooth. However, while 1,400 nits peak auto-brightness handles standard environments, it struggles under direct outdoor sunlight compared to flagship screens. I was expecting the phone to be significantly smaller than the 6.46" Fairphone 5, but actually, side by side, there really isn't much in it.

The Always-On Display is bright and visible, but it feels poorly optimised. Instead of taking advantage of low-power display states like rival OEMs, it drains the battery rapidly - behaving more like an unoptimised third-party background app. There is no manual brightness adjustment slider for the AoD either - you are at the mercy of its automatic brightness algorithm.

The audio performance is easily the weakest aspect of the hardware. The stereo speakers (top earpiece + bottom super-linear speaker) are tinny, flat and noticeably worse than the Fairphone 5. They cap out at 85dB, making them fine for phone calls or notification pings, but listening to music or podcasts in anything beyond a silent room is a dead loss. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack, but then to be fair there wasn't on the 5 either. High-res wireless codecs are well supported over Bluetooth 5.4 (including aptX Lossless and LC3), but native Dolby Atmos and LDAC support are absent. Shipping with stock Android 16, the interface is clean, fast and free of third-party bloatware beyond the My Fairphone app.

The yellow hardware switch on the right side triggers Fairphone Moments - a digital wellbeing mode designed to curb screen addiction. Flipping the switch instantly simplifies your home screen down to 5 core apps: Camera, Browser, Maps, Messages and Phone. Notifications and incoming calls are silenced by default, letting through only starred contacts or urgent repeat callers (someone dialling twice within 15 minutes). It’s a great concept, similar to TCL's Max Ink Mode on their NxtPaper devices, but it needs a software polish-up. Switching modes doesn't stop active background tasks (audio streams keep playing), and swiping away from the interface causes your standard home screen to briefly flash on screen before returning to the minimalist launcher.

Fairphone has followed Apple and Google by implementing a battery "pill" icon in the status bar without a native toggle to display just a numerical percentage. (Brands like Samsung and Motorola handle this much better by offering user choice). And, again, the Fairphone 5 has the figures, not 'pill', though no doubt when they upgrade it to Android 16 it'll follow suit. Thankfully, Fairphone did not clone iOS’s split notification shade; swiping down brings up the classic, unified Android notification panel and quick settings tiles.

The rear camera array uses a 50MP Sony LYTIA LYT-700C primary sensor (1/1.56", OIS/EIS, f/1.88) paired with a 13MP Ultrawide lens (120° FOV) and a Time-of-Flight depth sensor. The front features a 32MP sensor with autofocus. Photos from the main 50MP sensor perform surprisingly well for this price point, delivering realistic colour reproduction, sharp detail and reliable dynamic range. Alongside Google Photos, Fairphone pre-installs a privacy-focused, local-only Offline Gallery app, keeping your media entirely on-device. My Phones Show Chat colleague Steve Litchfield has produced a useful video reviewing this phone with a deeper dive into the cameras. You can watch it via this link.

Fairphone has introduced a modular accessory ecosystem anchored by custom backplates. Because the recycled plastic casing is slippery, the optional Finger Loop backplate (featuring a flat-laying neoprene strap that doubles as a kickstand) is practically essential. Fairphone also offers an official protective case with a cut-out for the loop, a wallet backplate, lanyards and screen protectors.

The 4,415mAh removable battery easily gets through a full working day, supported by standard 27W fast charging (30W peak) that hits 50% in 30 minutes. Fairphone’s battery management software includes an Eco Charge mode and an 80% charge limit threshold with pass-through power, protecting cell longevity over its rated 1,000+ charge cycles. True to form mand ethics, the box contains only the phone and a SIM ejector tool - no charger, no USB cable and zero plastic packaging. They will sell you these 'accessories' separately of course along with the replacement parts as described above.

The Fairphone 6+ isn't trying to beat standard mid-range devices on raw spec sheets. The somewhat tinny speakers, removal of DisplayPort output and slippery/chalky recycled plastic back are real trade-offs compared to the Fairphone 5. However, the bump to 12GB of RAM fixes the single biggest performance bottleneck of the base Fairphone 6, guaranteeing this phone will handle Android updates comfortably through to 2033. Combined with an upgraded Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip, a solid primary camera, easy self-repairability and unmatched supply chain ethics, the 6+ stands as the most complete, future-proof repairable smartphone on the market today. And you have to admire the ethics, for sure. Will people (be able to) pay the extra for those ideals? That's a question for Fairphone to answer, but if it was categorically 'no' then they would surely have folded a long time ago. So good for them and those who support them.

Cape Fear (2026, 1962 and 1991)

I went into this wondering how they were going to stretch a tight, film-length thriller into a ten-episode TV show - and how on earth Javier Bardem could match Robert De Niro's dark and disturbing central character. I was surprised and delighted in one case, but not in the other. It's on Apple TV and can be binged if you fancy it.

Unlike the original film and novel where Max Cady is a convicted sex offender, this reimagines Javier Bardem’s Max Cady as a man who has just served 17 years in prison for the brutal murder of his pregnant wife, Melissa. Released back into society, Cady is bizarrely treated by some corners of the public and a documentary crew as a folk hero and a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

At the centre of his resentment are attorney Anna Bowden, played by Amy Adams (Big Eyes) and her husband, prosecutor Tom Bowden played by Patrick Wilson (Molly's dad in Fargo)! Years prior, Anna served as Max's defence counsel and pushed him into a harsh plea deal, while Tom helped put him away. Adding to the heavy psychological web, it is revealed that Anna and Max share a complicated past and Anna secretly - for reasons that come out in the show - rushed Max’s plea deal through and got him locked away.

The middle stretch of the ten episodes slows down significantly and gets kinda talky, leaning into updated themes of misinformation and character back-stories, not present in previous depictions of the story. Cady systematically inserts himself into the Bowdens' lives, exploiting existing fractures, sowing intense paranoia between Tom and Anna and targeting their children, Zack (Joe Anders) and Natalie (Lily Collias). The psychological torture culminates in brutal ways - such as Zack being targeted and manipulated - while Cady builds a public persona, even managing to launch a restaurant named Melissa & Adam dedicated to his lost family.

As the series stretches into its final episodes, the slow-burn pacing of the middle bit explodes into action during a Category 5 hurricane, like in the film, hitting Savannah, Georgia - unlike the 1991 film, where the finale, you will remember, is at Cape Fear on the boat. Before confronting the Bowdens directly, Cady tracks down his estranged family (again, more padding) on a houseboat, featuring his abusive, institutionalising, religion-nutty father Robert (played by the scary and sinister Ron Perlman) and, at the risk of giving too much away, Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers, From Dust Till Dawn, Husbands and Wives) pops up in a similarly dark persona - an interesting hook into the 1991 film, where she plays the family's daughter so well.

In the finale, all the threads are pulled together and yes, it is a much more complex plot (partly because of said padding to make it a longer story for the ten episodes) where the strands reside - but it has a satisfying outcome in many ways as we work out how the puzzle fits together. The pacing, apart from that middle slow-down, is tackled well with reveals placed where they needed to be in order to raise tension and suspense, usually culminating in episodic cliffhanger endings!

Lily Collias (in the film's Juliette Lewis role as the family daughter) plays Natalie brilliantly well - in fact, she almost steals the show throughout, frankly (much like Juliette Lewis in the film). Natalie is not as green and naive as Lewis's Danielle (the daughter in the film), but rather street-wise and confident. They do share the same vulnerability, however, in terms of wanting to push boundaries set down by controlling parents - and thus finding an audience for the always-menacing and threatening Max. So yes, to my second fear at the outset (perhaps my Cape Fear!); Bardem is terrific, as he usually is in all his acting engagements. He has developed his character - not sure by how much, as he seems to also have been on the production team, alongside Martin Scorsese (another link as director of the 1991 film) and Steven Spielberg, alongside Adams, too.

Directors of the episodes were different people and included Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game, Defending Jacob), Reed Morano (The Handmaid's Tale), Trey Edward Shults (Waves), Stephen Williams (Watchmen) and Jonathan van Tulleken (Shōgun) - so much to look out for there in terms of shooting style and, well, yes, direction! It really is very well done, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout, despite the slow-down midway to pad it out. It's edge-of-the-seat stuff mostly, gripping TV - what we've come to expect from Apple!

I do think that Bardem and Collias were the stars of the show for my final takeaway, but that might well have also been true for the respective characters' actors, Lewis and De Niro, in the 1991 film. It's highly recommended by me - and now I'm off to watch the 1991 film again, and also the 1962 version with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, which I've not visited in decades. Good stuff. And great telly!

The 1962 Film

Having now journeyed back to the 1962 black-and-white original, it is fascinating to see how differently the material was handled before being stretched into modern prestige television. Directed by J. Lee Thompson and dripping with heavy, high-contrast shadows and sharp lighting, the film wears its stylistic influences proudly on its sleeve - playing with a deeply Hitchcockian, classic film noir atmosphere.

Story-wise, things are far more straightforward and streamlined than the 2026 series or Scorsese's 1991 remake (which I shall rewatch next and add thoughts about here). Gregory Peck plays Sam Bowden (not Tom) and his connection to Robert Mitchum’s Max Cady is refreshingly simple: Sam wasn't a complex defence attorney tangled in a web of past secrets, but merely the lone eyewitness who put Cady away.

The domestic setup also belongs firmly to another era; Sam’s wife is a classic 1960s housewife who relies entirely on her husband, a stark contrast to Amy Adams’ fiercely capable, modern incarnation in the TV show. Meanwhile, the daughter, Nancy, is only a single child (unlike the three children in John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners) and the film subtly plays into Cady's predatory nature with costume design choices that highlight her youth juxtaposed against adult vulnerability.

While Robert Mitchum is wonderfully rough-ready, menacing and manipulative as Cady, he ultimately lacks the chaotic, magnetic theatricality that Javier Bardem (or Robert De Niro) brought to the role. Peck is solid as the upstanding moral compass - and it's a treat to spot Telly Savalas in action - but the narrative moves at a much punchier pace, culminating precisely where you expect: in and around the boat at Cape Fear. It is a wonderful time capsule of 1960s suspense, proving that the core cat-and-mouse game has always had incredible legs, no matter how much the creators choose to pad or prune it.

Desalination Plants and the UK

If the UK can't cope with droughts every summer and having too much rain in the winter without enough reservoirs, why don't we, like, for example, in the middle-east, have desalination plants, turning the billions of gallons of sea water surrouinding us into drinkable and irrigation-helpful water, I wondered. So I asked Gemini.

It sounds logical on the surface - we are surrounded by ocean, so filtering sea water seems like the ultimate fix for dry spells. However, comparing the UK to the Middle East overlooks a vast gap in energy economics, geography, and climate realities. While the UK actually does have a major desalination plant - the Beckton plant built by Thames Water in East London in 2010 - it has largely been considered a financial nightmare. Several key factors explain why desalination remains a last resort in Britain.

1. Astronomical Energy Costs and Carbon Impact

Desalination uses reverse osmosis, forcing seawater through ultra-fine membranes at extreme pressure. Middle Eastern nations can power massive desalination plants using abundant, cheap oil and solar energy, often running co-generation plants that use waste heat from power generation. In the UK, electricity is significantly more expensive and subject to strict carbon-reduction targets. Desalinating water requires 3 to 5 times more energy than treating river or reservoir water, sending water bills soaring.

2. The Maintenance "Mothball" Trap

In the Gulf, desalination plants run 24/7/365 because there is zero fresh groundwater. In the UK, droughts are intermittent. Desalination plants do not handle being switched on and off easily. The delicate membranes degrade if left sitting idle and pipes corrode. London's £270m Beckton plant was intended as a "drought-only" backup, but because it sat unused for years at a time, it suffered constant mechanical failures, chemical leaks and maintenance headaches. It ended up costing over £500 million in debt and upkeep while barely providing a week’s worth of water over a 15-year period.

3. Infrastructure and Topography (Moving the Water)

Water is extremely heavy and expensive to pump uphill. UK coasts are generally low-density, while the highest demand is in inland urban areas or elevated regions in the South East. Pumping millions of tonnes of desalinated water from the coast miles inland requires massive new pipe networks and massive pumping stations, creating another huge ongoing energy cost.

4. Harsh Local Environmental Impact

For every litre of drinking water produced, desalination creates a litre of concentrated, highly toxic brine. In deep, warm waters like the Persian Gulf, brine can disperse relatively quickly. In the shallower, sensitive marine ecosystems around British coastal waters and estuaries, dumping high-salinity toxic brine damages local fisheries and marine life.  

What the UK Is Doing Instead Rather than relying on desalination, the UK’s water strategy focuses on solutions that yield far more water per pound spent.

Fixing Leaks The UK loses roughly 3 billion litres of treated water every single day through aging, leaky underground pipe networks. Plugging existing leaks is far cheaper and greener than building energy-hungry industrial sea-water plants.  

Water Recycling (Effluent Transfer) Taking cleaned, treated wastewater from sewage treatment plants, putting it back into rivers and taking it out further downstream to filter again. This uses a fraction of the energy of desalination because the salt content is already low.

Regional Water Transfers & New Reservoirs The UK actually has plenty of rain - it’s just in the wrong places (the North and West get the rain; the South and East have the population). Building new reservoirs (like the massive planned Abingdon reservoir in Oxfordshire) and cross-country transfer pipes to move water from wet regions to dry regions is vastly cheaper over a 50-to-100-year lifecycle than running desalination facilities.

The End of Oak Street (2026) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

This is a science-fiction adventure film from Bad Robot Productions that has recently had its cinema release. Set in 1982 in a suburban town in Michigan - looking not dissimilar to the neighbourhood in E.T. - Oak Street is having a summer party with lots of happy fun going on. 

Looking like a model nuclear family from the outside, things aren't hunky-dory in the Platt household at the moment. There is friction between Gregg, the father (Ewan McGregor), and his wife Denise (Anne Hathaway) over him working excessively long hours. Meanwhile, their two kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and younger brother Brian (Christian Convery), are noticing their parents' issues and are worried about where they may lead.

However, these family issues will soon pale into insignificance as things in the neighbourhood take a very strange turn the following night during a heavy rainstorm. Brian is woken by some very bright flashing lights and sounds like heavy thunder. He then wakes his sister and they both start to hear unfamiliar, animal-like noises in the distance.

When morning finally comes, there is a total power outage affecting the entire street, and they also notice that the ambient temperature outdoors seems to have dramatically risen. They then discover that Starbuck, the family's treasured German Shepherd, has gone missing from his tether in the back garden, sending the parents out in the family car to look for the beloved pet.

The trailer for this summer release has been around for ages, so I don't think many who have heard of the film are unaware that the main premise is that the entire neighbourhood has somehow teleported back in time to the Cretaceous period, based on the dinosaurs we see. So, as the growing terror of the gradual invasion of prehistoric beasties builds, the family have to learn how to survive, and that mutual fear seems to bring them closer.

With a surprisingly short running time of 1h 40m, this is a quirky film as we never really find out why this time jump has happened, but the sight of extremely well-rendered dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes - including pterosaurs - running and flying around the streets and causing all sorts of havoc was very entertaining. The acting and the relationship between the son and daughter characters felt genuinely heartwarming as they clumsily negotiate the frightening situation unfolding outside when they get separated from their parents.

McGregor is the one who seems not to fit here, as I can't imagine why one of many American leading men wasn't cast in his role instead. It has been a busy year for Hathaway after major roles in The Devil Wears Prada II and the recent Nolan blockbuster, Odyssey - she is the one who carries this film, as it's her character who makes the tough decisions at the end. Although many humans meet their demise, it's not visually gory, making it suitable for family viewing. To sum up, it's great cinema entertainment, and you just know that J.J. Abrams is watching carefully to see if he can turn this idea into another money-spinning franchise!

The Unholy Trinity (2024)

This western, set in 1870s Montana, was directed by Richard Gray, and our story kicks off when a young man named Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard) watches his father, Isaac, executed by hanging. Moments before his death, Isaac tasks Henry with an ultimatum: avenge him by killing the man who framed him - the Sheriff of Trinity, Saul Butler.

So Henry arrives in Trinity, a small frontier town, aiming to carry out his father's final wish. However, he quickly runs into the new lawman, Sheriff Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), who appears honourable and gives the naive young gunfighter a second chance. Henry soon learns that the man he is looking to kill is already dead, and the new Sheriff shows him the grave.

Enter Saint Christopher! Next up is the star of the show in my opinion, "Saint" Christopher - Samuel L. Jackson. He's a charismatic, ruthless figure and former partner of Henry’s father. He’s hunting down a fortune in missing gold that he believes Isaac buried somewhere in the vicinity. Sheriff Dove’s got his own dark secrets and history in relation to the gold, the people of the town, Henry's father - and his wife even more so, as the local doctor who has been around for a long time.

In amongst this, there's a sub-plot going on relating to Running Cloud, a Native American who is living wild but who the townsfolk believe is a murderer. Gabriel knows the truth, so he doesn't arrest her, but he has to deal with the posse who are on her trail in order to protect her, maintaining order and justice.

We now enter a stage of the film where the goodies are often in stand-offs with the baddies. The baddies believe that they are doing the right thing, while the goodies appreciate this but want the whole scenario to end peaceably and for all to know the truth once and for all - without bloodshed. But that's not what they get as all hell is let loose and all these macho men shoot and kill each other for no real reason!

Still lurking around and having a laugh is Christopher, however, always seeing the fun in a situation, manipulating both sides and winding everyone up in the process - with his sole intent on finding the gold, should it exist! There's more violence as drunken men come to the saloon where the ladies of the night provide services upstairs, and misunderstandings end up in yet more bloodshed and unpleasantness. Henry is in the middle of all this, starting off as a passive kind of chap, but becoming less and less so the more he is exposed to these drunken thugs and the violence that follows them around. Taken under the wing of Christopher and Gabriel in turn, his skin thickens very quickly as he realises that this is a dog-eat-dog world in which he has to adapt to survive.

Anyway, it plays out like a half-decent western with a half-decent plot, half-decent acting and half-decent... well, everything really! Not a film you'd watch twice, but it's a half-decent bit of entertainment for an hour and a half! Apparently, filming took place in late 2023 in Montana during the SAG-AFTRA strike. The production was granted a rare Interim Agreement, allowing stars like Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson to shoot while major studio projects were completely shut down. Some of the outside scenes suffer because of this, I think - "round the campfire" type situations feel much like made-for-TV sets. It was filmed almost entirely at the Yellowstone Film Ranch in Livingston, Montana - a purpose-built Western town set.

The film heavily leveraged its star power by pairing a former James Bond (Brosnan) with Samuel L. Jackson, though neither actor was breaking new dramatic ground. In fact, they saunter through it with ease, looking like it's a fairly easy payday-type deal! Apparently, Jackson signed on specifically because he rarely gets to do traditional Western period pieces and fancied doing so. And he's loving it! There's some nice scenery to look at, but most of the interesting and well-shot scenes are the interior ones, especially in and around the town and saloon. Worth a look on a quiet Thursday evening, feet up with popcorn - it's streaming now on a few platforms in the UK.

The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971)

The reason I landed here revisiting this bawdy, innuendo-laden British camp-romp just now was because of the recent death of Cheryl Hall (which I wrote about on my blog the other day). In actual fact, she's only in it for a few minutes, much like many of the plethora of 1970s British TV stars on show!

Here's a list of actors and comics taking part, some for just one scene, some for more, and much between. For someone of my age who grew up watching this kind of stuff on the telly, along with related comedy and sitcoms, it's a feast for the eyes and memory! The ones that I'll pick out are Bruce Forsyth, Bernard Bresslaw, Joan Sims, Roy Hudd, Harry Secombe, June Whitfield, Leslie Phillips, Bill Pertwee, Ian Carmichael, Alfie Bass, Spike Milligan, Melvyn Hayes, Ronnie Barker, Marty Feldman, Stephen Lewis and Felicity Devonshire as the nude girl, top of the shop! And many more besides - it's 'spot the 1970s celebrity' time!

The one I wanted to highlight, though, was Harry H. Corbett in the segment 'Lust', in which he quite brilliantly plays a man looking for love (or even a quick date would do, let alone a wriggle in the sack)! He stumbles into a situation where opportunity knocks with a girl who has been stood up for a date - and with whom he ends up chatting in two adjacent phone boxes in a tube station. It's thoughtful, poignant, funny, sad and moving all at the same time as the sketch unfolds and reveals its substance. It was specifically written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the creators of Steptoe and Son, which explains why they knew how to balance his comic timing with melancholy so well. Corbett is incredibly convincing, a long way from the bitter and twisted Harold in Steptoe! Worth checking out that segment for sure.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here and should explain that it's a film basically made up of sketches. They are loosely held together by some fun cartoon sequences looking very Monty Python and Terry Gilliam, but here designed and animated by Bill Sewell, with the distinctive, bizarre voiceovers provided by Spike Milligan! It's made up of seven sections, each depicting that religious nonsense relating to the 'seven deadly sins' (as you may have guessed by the title)! Each one spins a tale supposedly depicting the ins and outs of each of these: Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, the aforementioned Lust, Pride, Sloth and Wrath.

The 'Sloth' sketch (written by Spike Milligan) features himself and Ronnie Barker in a completely silent, slapstick duel of laziness that is almost pure silent-era comedy - a stark contrast to the dialogue-heavy Galton and Simpson or Marty Feldman segments. The segments were penned by a range of top comedy writers from the day, including Graham Chapman, Barry Cryer, Marty Feldman, Alan Simpson, Ray Galton, Spike Milligan and more. Each one brings a 1970s TV feel and flavour to the sketches. For someone like me from that era, it's not only great fun but pure nostalgia as we step back into a world I remember well growing up as a kid. The cars, the streets, the coppers, the colours, the shops, the buses, the phone boxes and so much more - a proper trip down Memory Lane.

Of course, nothing is perfect and some sketches are better than others, but they all have a real engagement to them. It's great to see these comedy greats at work together under the leadership of director Graham Stark (known mostly as a comedy actor across the decades and for his roles in the Pink Panther films). It's worth noting that this was his directorial debut, for which he managed to assemble virtually the entire comedy establishment of 1970s Britain purely through his personal address book and industry friendships!

Even if you aren't from my era, I reckon you might still have some fun with this, dated as young people would no doubt consider it coming in cold - and yes, dated is the word. But that's the point, really! Anyway, if you fancy the challenge and don't have the DVD lurking at the back of your collection like some of us, you can grab it from the likes of MusicMagpie for the price of a large coffee, or catch it on YouTube when someone uploads it and gets away with it! Great fun, bawdy and recommended!

The Last House (2026)

Directed by Louis Leterrier (Fast X, Now You See Me), this creature-feature-cum-sci-fi-cum-Disney-style adventure yarn arrived on Netflix this month and stars Greta Lee (who was terrific in Past Lives in 2023) and Wagner Moura (Narcos, Civil War).

Jason Delgado (Moura), an unemployed engineer, lives in suburban Seattle with his wife Ann (Lee), their young children Ruth and Graham and their family Golden Retriever, Cassidy. One afternoon, an unprecedented storm rolls in. Suddenly, an inexplicable force seals the family inside their home. Doors and windows cannot be opened and an impenetrable barrier composed of controlled rainwater prevents any escape through walls, floors or the foundation.

Neighbours across the street face the exact same fate, while people caught outdoors are picked off by unseen forces. The lockdown stretches from days into months into years, forcing them to adapt to survive inside the house. Ann establishes an indoor garden using soil from potted plants and rainwater harvesting systems, while Jason invents 'chimney fishing' - using the fireplace chimney to trap birds and small animals in the garden with various contraptions he invents, then dragging them up and into the house! Desperation turns grim when food runs out and the ageing dog, already on heart medication to keep him alive, meets his end. Jason, the pragmatist, knows what to do with the remains - the others don't want to know!

We stay with the family through the weeks and months as they learn to adapt and how to behave when the creature (or creatures) outside make an appearance. Eventually, the film leaps five years forward, with the kids grown into teenagers. The tentacled creatures are still around, but the family has gained plenty of experience by now in how to keep them at bay and survive.

Ruth somehow works out that the creatures aren't aliens, but rather some kind of ancient, mythical deep-sea creatures reclaiming the earth's surface after centuries of human ocean pollution and climate destruction. Here lies the first message for humanity! The creatures become nature's response to climate change. Earth isn't being 'invaded' but rather its original inhabitants are taking back what humanity polluted - showing that humanity can't defeat nature through misusing resources. Survival requires empathy, restraint and accepting our shared place in the ecosystem. And so on!

Lastly, the film functions as a snapshot and reflection of what happened at the turn of the decade regarding COVID - when everyone was locked down and had to live with codependency, paranoia, resource hoarding and domestic claustrophobia.

I was interested to learn that the film was shot primarily at Shepperton Studios here in Blighty under the original title 11817, before Netflix acquired it and changed the title to The Last House. Kingsley Ben-Adir was originally in talks to star alongside Greta Lee before scheduling issues led to Wagner Moura taking the male lead as Jason. Ruth was portrayed by three different actors across the film's time jumps - Riley Chung (8-year-old), Emma Ho (13-year-old) and Arden Cho providing the voiceover for adult Ruth.

For most of the film, Ruth was played in her 8-year-old stage, and Riley Chung, alongside the other three, did a fine job in her role. It all got a bit 'Disney'-like towards the end, to be honest - and the whole concept and premise, of course, was pretty daft to begin with, but they did a good job of making it feel real enough. The director also did a fine job keeping it together and there was some good cinematography making the most of the claustrophobic set (almost all of the film was inside the house) alongside some underwater sequences as things went pear-shaped!

It's worth a watch - a decent-enough little adventure - and for those who want some takeaway messages, they can have them! I quite enjoyed it. The pacing was good - slowing down when it needed to, then flying off at times too - and the near-two-hour runtime flew past nicely.

Cheryl Hall has died, aged 76

Cheryl Georgette Hall (23rd July 1950 – 9th August 2026) was best known for playing Shirley in Citizen Smith (1977–1979) and had been in The Bill (1984–1988). I also remember her in On the Buses in 1971 as Eileen the 'clippie' in the episode The Epidemic, which, like most of them, was a complete scream!

She was also in Dear Mother...Love Albert (1969–1972) as Rodney Bewes' girlfriend and as Sid Abbott's (Sid James) secretary in Bless This House (1974)! She jumped in and out of many 1970s TV episodes, often as a one-off, for example Sykes (1972), Within These Walls (1974) and as David Jason's love interest in the ITV sitcom Lucky Feller (1976). But the role that most of us will remember her for was as the apparently 'dappy' girlfriend (of her then real-life husband Robert Lindsay) in Citizen Smith (1977).

Her film appearances included the Avarice segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), the farce comedy No Sex Please, We're British (1973) and the all-star pop comedy Three for All (1975). In the 1980s, she popped in and out of the police drama series The Bill, working right up until 2007, and even had a guest role in EastEnders! The list goes on though and includes Casualty (1995), Grange Hill (1994), Inspector Morse (1992), London's Burning (1992), Get Some In! (1977), the excellent Survivors (1977), The Sweeney (1975), The Fenn Street Gang (1971) and loads more – right back to her debut on British TV in 1969. If ever there was an actress who had landed a part in so many TV shows in the 60s, 70s and even 80s, she would be that!

Before she played Shirna in Doctor Who (Carnival of Monsters, 1973), she was actually on the final shortlist of three actresses to play the Third Doctor’s iconic companion, Jo Grant, back in 1970. Katy Manning got the part, but producer/director Barry Letts liked Cheryl so much that he specifically brought her back for Carnival of Monsters a couple of years later.

It is worth noting that she left Citizen Smith after Series 2 because she wanted more 'meat' in her comic roles rather than just playing the reaction-face 'straight man' to the male leads. John Sullivan later admitted she was completely right about the lack of depth given to female characters in sitcoms back then – a realisation that inspired him to write proper, fully fleshed-out female leads like Penny in Just Good Friends!

Before her marriage to Robert Lindsay, she spent the early 70s as the partner of 'Confessions' star Robin Askwith, who fondly remembered her as a fiercely talented, charismatic working-class force when news of her passing broke. A really fascinating turn in her later life that many TV fans don't know is that she moved away from full-time acting into public service. She was a deeply committed Labour activist, served as a Kent County Councillor (eventually becoming Leader of the Labour Group) and even stood as the Labour Parliamentary candidate for Canterbury in the 1997 General Election.

Ricky Gervais' Alley Cats (2026)

A TV show on Netflix with 6 very short episodes (15 minutes each) in which Gervais and his usual bunch of mates (think the After Life/The Office/Derek crew) sit and chew over life's absurdities.

But rather than do it just sat around a lounge as themselves, they're voicing cartoon cats. And so injecting quite a lot of cat-based puns and observations into the mix. But it's so obvious that it's just the team, chewing the cud.

Of course, you have to be a Gervais fan and appreciate his sledgehammer wit, delivery, language and life-view, but I do. So have found it great fun. In fact, the funnniest thing that I've seen for ages. I caught myself laughing out loud. A lot. The neighbours must've thought me bonkers! Recommended!