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.

Apartment 7A (2024)

Apartment 7A tells the story leading up to the beginning of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968). A prequel. The opening scenes in Rosemary's Baby have been smartly dovetailed by the new film, over half a century later, to make the story seem continuous. So if you've not seen either, it might be a good idea to watch Apartment 7A first for the chronology and storyline!

Julia Garner, as we've now come to expect, is excellent in the role of Terry, a hopeful dancer coming to New York for fame, fortune and dancing! In a scene assured to make the viewer frown and take a sharp intake of breath, she knackers her ankle at an audition. On the way home she feels sick, outside the apartment building which is also the setting of Rosemary's Baby later. The friendly couple, Minnie and Roman, who try to do so much to help Rosemary later, take Terry in, make her their tenant in a spare apartment next to theirs and spookily arrange things around her to make her dreams come true - much like they will later do for Rosemary. At a price - and not a financial one! She becomes their all-but adopted daughter. They say they are happy to, as they never had kids of their own.

So now the spooky stuff starts to notch up as Terry is exposed to a string of weird incidents and disturbing visual stuff, all the time being fed consumables by the elderly couple - just like they later do for Rosemary. The building is eerily equipped with sinister connections between apartments, dark corners, strange stuff going on within its walls - you get the picture! And I'm now trying desperately not to spoil anything - assuming squarely that you have not seen either of these films.

Rosemary's Baby is a fabulous demonstration of suspense and anxiety from the maestro director of which Hitchcock would be proud and Mia Farrow attacks the titular role flawlessly. Rosemary and Terry both deteriorate physically and mentally as they are exposed to similar difficulties in the building. Slightly differently for Terry, as she is lonely and alone, whereas Rosemary is happily married - so less dependent on the older couple. In fact, the young couple are often annoyed by their interfering ways much earlier in the film than the lonely Terry is in Apartment 7A. But the characters are both, on the face of it, horribly manipulated by those they trust around them as paranoia creeps in as the similar exposure of what's going on in the building lead to not-so-different climaxes.

Because one follows directly on from the other, clearly the continuity is there to enjoy and whichever way round you watch them, by the time you see the second one, you'll know the secrets of the building and trappings, so that makes it a bit difficult not to create a spoiler for yourself! But both films are really well done, I think. The classic Rosemary's Baby is matched in many ways by the new Apartment 7A, but also different in others. The acting by all players in both films is top-notch and they are both beautifully shot, making good use of the sets. They are both filled with chills, terror and horror! But watch the new one first! Both are out there in streaming services as I write.

Death Bell (2008)

Here's a Korean treat from back in 2008. A kind of slasher, gory thriller that they often produce so well over there. Originally called Gosa, it's about a bunch of students in a school who are trapped by, well, they don't know who/what, with a couple of their teachers and a janitor kicking around.

The school tannoy has been taken over by the assailant and they/it has started to announce, one-by-one, a bunch of sadistic 'puzzles' which the group must solve in order to stop the grizzly murder of each of them (which they soon find out, is in order of their 'ranking' in the school exams)! Hang on in there though, as there is some logic to all this and the satisfying reveal in the finale puts all the pieces together.

In the meantime, we, along with the students, have no idea what's what, why or whom - but get together and try to solve the puzzles, revealing clues as to what the heck it's all about! The murders and traps are somewhat inventive and there's lots of blood and gore being hurled around in the process as they are picked off one-by-one, with fairly good visual effects. Oh yes, they are not allowed to leave the school or they get killed, this is an evening, so nobody is around from outside (though I did wonder why parents didn't wonder why their kids had not come home!) and all land/cellphones have been cut off!

So yes, it creates a theatre of gore which, on the face of it, dubiously and at a stretch, nobody can get away from. Why the kids don't just all stay together in the same room so they can't be picked off, I don't know. But let's not nitpick - as plot holes there may be, but it doesn't take away the fun of it all.

We are led to wonder if there's something supernatural and ghostly going on as a pupil who had been murdered in the school a couple of years back kind of appears to some of the students, but it's exam time and the students are under a lot of stress - so we're not really sure if the visions of the 'ghost' are real or down to some anxiety/mental health crisis. Certainly not all the students see the visions.

I won't reveal any more as it will spoil the outcome, but it's certainly fun - and I love the Korean culture in terms of the way they speak, especially the girls - the intonation in their language and voice is lovely to hear as so different to our boring English! It's also funny in places, far-fetched in others, annoyingly badly acted by some, but not others - along with much handheld camera work. The sound effects and music is nicely done, supportive of the tone and suspense here and there - and it's quite nicely shot, claustrophobic often, all inside the school.

I don't know the director Hong-Seung Yoon, nor any of the actors but a number of them do a decent enough and convincing job. The DVD that I saw had subtitles, but you can also get a dubbed version. It's not streaming anywhere that I can see at time of writing, I'm afraid, but the DVD can be bought at the likes of CeX and Music Magpie in the UK, used - or probably new elsewhere - and no doubt it'll pop into streaming services at some point. Suggest you watch out for it!

The Invasion (2007)

I'd never seen this little thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, but stumbled into it on one of the streaming channels this week. It's about an "alien epidemic" which is inflicted on earth which takes over humans, makes them calm, passive and unemotional, but controlled by who-knows-who/what! Sounds quite desirable to me - but the cast didn't think so!

Nicole Kidman is Carol, a psychiatrist, who has a small boy, Oliver, played by Jackson Bond, and they live in Washington. There's a husband, Tucker, played by Jeremy Northam, from whom she's separated and has shown little interest for the last 4 years - but suddenly, infected, he's put himself back in the frame claiming legal rights to spend time with Oliver.

She's also got a doctor friend in the frame with whom she seems to be best friends/girlfriend (neither of them seem too sure)! He's Ben and played by Daniel Craig. Between them, along with their labrat buddy, they try to find a cure whilst not falling asleep if they do get infected - because it's OK to be infected but when you go to sleep it gets to work taking over the body during REM! So stay awake!

People get infected by being vomited on by someone who's already got it! So that's mostly the gore taken care of. Most of the rest of the grizzly stuff is around dead bodies and bodies 'encased' in some sort of goo/netting whilst they are taken over in sleep. It's done well enough. Then as the heat turns up it becomes a race across the city, against the odds, more and more infected people, less and less uninfected, ex-husband whisking child away, mum racing not only to find him as she's his mum, but also discovering that he seems to be immune - as he'd been infected and gone to sleep and is alright.

You get the idea - the kid is the key to sorting it all out and the main players are racing against the clock - and the infected - to crush it once and for all. They're all doing an OK job though not needing to try very hard - it felt a bit like an easy payday sometimes. There are plot holes and not much clarity about what's what really - but it kind of hangs together under direction from Oliver Hirschbiegel, taken from the late Jack Finney's book (and various other films) Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Having said all that it's certainly entertaining if you don't think too hard about it and just enjoy the ride. The pacing is OK until the last 5 minutes of the 1 hour 40 minutes when the editing becomes laughable - they wrap the whole story up in 5 minutes flat, lurching from chaos to calm. Blink and you'll miss it! Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig do a fine job and the little boy, Jackson Bond matched them both during his scenes. All good fun, but sadly quite forgettable.

The Jester (2023)

I almost forgot about this one, now streaming on various platforms. It seems to have been caned by most reviewers but I thought it was OK. Low-budget thriller/chiller with most of the spooks based around the titular character's mask and position in the frame whilst terrorising people!

The Jester guy is genuinely creepy, the music is effective being used behind his acts of creepiness and (somewhat supernatural) ability to inflict gore and nastiness on victims in small-town America at Halloween. It's quite atmospheric at times but with little logic to what's going on in terms of an excuse for a story - just spooks, terror and fun!

Special effects are a bit basic, but that's not the point really - it's less about the gore and more about the sinister creep value. There's a great scene in a One Stop shop (or petrol station maybe) about half way through which is fun. A few jump-scares, mostly brought about by urgent music than visuals, but again, it doesn't rely on that.

There's a series of shorts out there starting in 2016 from the same director, Colin Krawchuk, so I must try to track them down. Michael Sheffield, in the lead does a good enough job as he holds The Jester's body menacingly and Lelia Symington as the lead female, Emma, similarly as our potential victim to get behind. A few beers, Friday night after the pub. Perfect!

Loony Fast Charging for Motorola

Inside the Edge 50 Pro box (at least, here in the UK) there's a 125W TurboCharging brick and a decent-looking USB-C to USB-C cable. Sometimes, just sometimes, not routinely, this can be worth its weight in gold! It produces staggeringly fast charge-speeds, from 0-100% in less than 20 minutes. (Yes, I know there are less mainstream devices that claim faster, but Moto is much more widely sold, globally.)

You seem to need to use their supplied charger to get that max Turbo speed, but my UGreen 100W GaN ain't far behind - unlike Oppo et al where just about anything else apart from their supplied VOOC will drop you down to very slow speeds.

Perhaps there's been a power cut (very common here) in the night and you wake up with no charge. Or you're out sightseeing caning the camera shooting holiday video. Watching a video/film using HDMI-Out/Smart Connect to your hotel's TV. Plug in, have a cuppa or a shower, or perhaps a cuppa in the shower - and Fanny's your aunt! A fully charged phone to get going with. It really is a feature that the Big Boys in mobile need to get (back) onto, even if they are frightened of battery longevity (people routinely charging this way). Or Samsung fires! Time to move on!

This particular phone also has 50W wireless charging available and even 10W reverse-wireless thrown in. (Note: In some regions, it comes with a 68W charger in the box instead of 125W.) At time of writing, the 512GB/12GB Black Beauty version is available via AmazonEU for £385, down from £599,

Black Cab (2024)

We spoke about this in Coming Soon in our Projector Room Podcast, so I thought I'd give it whirl. It's only on Shudder for now (or cinemas). I think my tolerance for nastiness and gore has gone up (or should that be down?) as even though there was a little of it here and there, it barely registered on the Salmon Goreometer!

A girl and her kind-of boyfriend/kind-of fiance end up in the back of a cab, locked in, being driven by our bozo fruit-loop (as seen very clearly in trailers). He hauls them off to his isolated lair in the woods, then does nasty things to them both.

We find out from the gob-shyte driver all about his background (which eventually stitches things together along with a kind of ghostly story mixed in) with clues as to what's what peppered out along the way.

It stars Nick Frost (from Shaun of the Dead) and Synnove Karlsen (from Last Night in Soho) who do a decent-enough job with the not-so-decent-enough material! They try to make it atmospheric and eerie throughout, all under cover of darkness/rain, pretty much, but don't really nail it. The best fun is waiting for the annoying, rude and abusive boyfriend to 'get it' whilst bit-by-bit feeling sorry for the girl and getting on her side.

It's OK - just nothing to write home about or consider watching again - or indeed shellin' out hard-earned to view if you don't have it 'included' somewhere. That's about it really. Instantly forgettable - but alright. I suppose!

Motorola ROKR 500

Sucker for Motorola products? Appreciate what Lenovorola are doing on Desktop and Mobile, particularly with Smart Connect? Run out of Moto stuff to get in to scratch the itch, allay the lust?! How about a dinky waterproof bedside/desktop/travel Bluetooth speaker/powerbank/wireless charger?

Let's face it, with 1001 other options out there and no real benefit here as a part of Motorola's ecosystem - you'd have to be as sold on Moto as I am to fall for this! Fortunately, it's cheap at £43 though I got it some months ago on an Amazon deal for less than half-price for £20 and I'd say that in that case, or even at full price, it's worth the punt! It's certainly very cute, attractive, a nice colour in this Jet Black and although not a patch on the output of my more expensive JBL Clip 5, it does have some advantages - with, for example, the light weight of the unit and built-in powerbank, enabling up to 10W Qi charging when travelling, depending on brick being used.

There are other colours if you buy it direct from Motorola - Titanium White, Lagoon Blue and my favourite, Coral Red. It's certainly compact and portable and will fit into (even) a jeans pocket (at a push)! Having said it's not up there with the more expensive JBL Clip 5, it ain't bad for volume and quality when hooked up to various devices via Bluetooth and, unlike the JBL, can be used for phone calls - as it has a microphone. I did test this and it seemed to work very well (with a Motorola Edge 50 Pro anyway)! Connection is solid, voices at both ends perfectly clear enough.

The waterproof/resistant certification is IPX/6 which makes it good for "powerful water jets from any angle" apparently. Depending on who you believe/read, IPX/6 rated protection is "extremely waterproof, impenetrable by weather, waterfalls and even a non-sustained total soaking". So take your pick! In real world use I'd guess that it's good for rain showers and bathroom splashes, but not to be submerged fully in water. At least, not for long! The X means no 'dust' protection, so perhaps not a beach-bound unit, more a desk/bedside/bathroom/travel one.

It's got a USB-C socket on one end under a weatherproof rubbery-feeling flap. It's not particularly quick to charge the 2,500mAh battery and Moto don't seem to quote what it should be, but it seems to be somewhere between 2 and 3 hours here on testing. When it's charged, and not being used as a wireless charger, it gives about 10 hours of playback on medium volume, so less on full. When charging a phone on the pad, it will clearly only give a maximum of 2,500mAh, so perhaps a mid-afternoon kick if your phone is running low, for example, for half of the now average phone's battery size.

It charges a phone very slowly on the pad of course - like about 10% in 30 minutes here, depending on phone, size of battery, state of depletion when attached and so forth. Your mileage will certainly vary! It will vary even more - like down to zero(!) - if the speaker is not being used at the time and it powers down, which it does after 15 minutes! So if you want a quick 10% boost for your phone and the ROKR 500 is not plugged in, that's probably as much as you'll get! Power it back on for another burst, I guess. Or hook it up to the phone and play music - though in this way will use the battery for doing that as well!

Probably best not to be relied on as a wireless charger when you don't have power plugged in - but the irony of that is clearly that you might as well then just plug the cable into the phone! Update I tested this with two Motorola phones (with 68W and 125W charging capability) and the charging was much better and faster. Again, I can't share specific data (we need a physicist!) but it charged those phones from about 80-100% very quickly indeed within the 15-minute window. Could it be a Moto thing, I wonder?!

The unit is very nicely made of hard plastic around the edges and back, anti-slip, rubbery grip feet on the bottom with a linen/cloth across the top where the Qi pad lies and speaker below. If you have a phone laying on it whilst listening, depending on the shape of the back of the phone, it does muffle it a bit but remains perfectly good for, say, listening to an audiobook on a timer when dropping off to sleep in a quiet room. 

There's a row of four buttons nicely embedded into the cloth at the front edge which you can get to with a phone laying on it, depending on size of the phone. The first is the power button, long-press to turn on/off, second volume down, then play/pause and finally, volume up. Short press for volume adjustments, press and hold for next/previous track. Play/pause to stop and start playback, obviously(!), but also to answer/end calls, disconnect the Bluetooth and even a double-press to invoke the Google Assistant, which then pops up on the phone. I've had no luck with Read Aloud Notifications, just this link to the Assistant.

You can also pair two of these speaker together if you want to, though I didn't have a second one to try. I can't find much data on this, so am assuming that it's playing the same audio source to both speakers, not that they can be used as a stereo pair.

The sound coming from the speaker is decent enough for a bedroom or office desk in a relatively quiet environment, but it's not going to be usable when ambient noise is present to any significant degree. It seems to be designed less for kids partying, more for someone stuck in a hotel room waiting for tomorrow's meeting(!) or, like me, a pretty quiet environment at home, in the kitchen or bathroom for sure.

Overall, the Motorola ROKR 500 is a decent device for anyone looking for a compact and portable Bluetooth speaker. It offers good-enough sound quality, with the above caveats, a stylish design and a range of convenient features. While it may not be the most powerful or feature-rich speaker on the market, at £20 it was a bit of a bargain, I reckon. At £43 maybe not quite so much, but it is cute. And has the Motorola name on it!

Motorola G85

The obvious way to tackle this G85 review is as a three-way comparison. Firstly, with the phone it replaces, the G84 from the year before, but more importantly in my view, the newer Edge 50 Neo - the big question being, is the extra £100 justified for the benefits that the latter brings. 

One caveat to remember here is to also check prices - as always Motorola phones are often on deals and sales, so shop around. At time of writing, for example, the Edge 50 Neo is £329 and the G85, £249 - making the difference a mere £70. But still, to many folk, even £70 is a significant difference when money is tight, so let's look at it.

Firstly the unboxing and the G85 comes in a minimalist box, all buff-coloured and eco-friendly, plastic-free as is their standard now, no charging brick, a USB-C to USB-C cable, some papers, a lovely soft, clear, simple, grippy TPU case (well done Moto) and a pokey-tool for the SIM Card tray. This is a PR unit, kindly loaned by MotorolaUK, which has been in the hands of other reviewers, so I can't tell you if the box is 'perfumed' in the way that others have been recently - I can't detect it! Be aware that depending on your region, contents of retail boxes may differ.

It's beautifully designed. Yeah, I know, I'm one of the few who really still likes the very-slightly curved screens. I'm not talking about waterfall edges, but just slightly - makes it feel classy and premium to me whilst being fairly minimalist, not interfering with screen touches. No surprises on layout of functions, nanoSIM Card tray with reverse for microSD but no second SIM option on this unit (apart from eSIM), USB-C port, speaker at the bottom, volume/power on the right, nothing left and top but microphones and the front panel has a secondary speaker for stereo, doubling up as the earpiece for calls in the usual way - and below that, a punch-hole Selfie cutout. The back is made of what they call eco-leather, well actually it's Silicone Polymer - plastic, but it does have a nice velvety feel to it and affords more grip, for those who don't want to use the case, than shiny plastic or glass.

I never had a G84 in-hand, so can only compare in terms of specs as I start to look at the G85, which arrived just under a year later, in June 2024. They both have the more budget-friendly plastic frame, same back options as mentioned above and the G85 is slightly bigger all-round with a 6.67" screen instead of the G84's 6.5" (which doesn't feel as big because of those curves), so a tad taller and wider, but about the same thickness and not far off the same weight. The older phone seems to have had an IP5/4 rating whereas the G85 is now back to the typical Moto nano-coating arrangements, officially at least. They may have just been saving some cash on the certification costs.

The Gorilla Glass 5 screen is up to Moto's usual standard, being a gorgeous, bright, colourful pOLED, as it was last year I'm told, both of them refreshing at up to 120Hz. The newer phone peaks out for brightness at 1600nits over 1300, for anyone who can tell! Both phones have 1080p screens with a 20:9 ratio, returning about 400ppi. The G85's screen really is nice to use, especially with that slight curve around the left and right - and is a joy to look at, too. I'm still not sure if these panels remain LG-supplied, but they make a big difference to usage and often defy the price-point as Moto are including them lower and lower down the range.

The chipsets used in the two phones are also comparable - the G85's SnapDragon 6s Gen 3 is apparently a slightly beefed up version of the G84's SnapDragon 695. The G85 performs well enough in my tests here taking it through the usual array of car-racing games, heavy loading in terms of copying files, reading/writing to microSD and so on. I detected no heating up even during the most intensive tasks. These chipsets are never going to perform like the latest/greatest industry leaders, but for Joe Public, they are just fine and the slight slowdown that might be detected by the user is so minimal that the vast majority of users' expectations will not be challenged.

This supplied Cobalt Blue unit has got 256GB Storage and 12GB RAM, but it's also available with 8GB RAM in 256GB and 128GB versions. Again, I have thrown many tasks at the system and yes, opening and closing apps, starting up the phone, is not as instant as more well-specified phones, but I certainly don't see any problematic shutting down of apps - they can be recalled from Recents from some way back. Both phones have got a microSD Card slot, so whichever base-model you get, you can expand up - and this one is playing very nicely with my 1TB microSD Card for read/write speeds. Incidentally, apart from this colour, you can also get it in Olive Green, Urban Grey and Magenta.

One of the differences between the two phones is that with the new one, Moto have stepped up their game with promises of longer support. The G84 arrived on Android 13 and it was pretty much unspecified as to how long it would be supported (though I understand that it does have Android 14 now) - but the G85 gets the promise of 2 OS updates (so to Android 16 following Google's release - which at time of writing sounds like it might be in mid-2025 now) and 4 years of Security updates (so to June 2028). Yes, it looks like this is not going to be supported terribly long-term, but at least it's specified and not at the whim of what they fancy doing at the time.

Another difference between the two phones is that the older phone had a 3.5mm audio-out socket which has been removed for the G85. Not sure how much that will impact people but to be honest, I'm mostly using Bluetooth these days as it's so good and convenient - so perhaps the legacy crowd will all eventually have to settle on Sony! The G84's audio also had 24-bit, high-res output but again, with Bluetooth, the G85 sounds great to my ears, good quality and volume - as always, depending on the quality of attached gear.

The speakers are up to Motorola's usual decent standards in my tests here, even at this cheaper price-point. Yes, at full volume they can get a little tinny, but playing with the Dolby Atmos equaliser settings and installing Wavelet sorts that out nicely. What you lose in a little volume you can make up for in quality. No, it's no Sony Xperia, but the stereo effect is good and soundstage wide and impactful 18" from the face. The vast majority of users will have no complains about the sound.

The cameras on the two phones are very similar as well. The main shooter being a 50MP one with OIS, a supporting 8MP wide-angle with autofocus, 1080p video at 60fps - although the Selfie has been upped in spec, now being a 32MP unit instead of 16MP. The test shots that I have taken here all seem perfectly good enough for the 98% of users who are going to post photos to social media and share with friends, leaving the 2% pixel-peepers no doubt to zoom in and tut-tut! That autofocus in the wide-angle camera allows for nice and close so-called Macro shots and shooting in Night Vision seems to pull out shareable photos even when the human eye sees pitch blackness! The camera software looks exactly the same to me as it is in various recent Motorola phones, so perhaps I'll point you now to my coverage in those. ThinkPhone, Edge 50 Pro, Edge 50 Neo, Edge 40, Edge 40 Neo, G Stylus (2024) and so on! There's oodles of Moto stuff on my blog here. You'll have gathered that I'm a fan!

Connectivity in my tests here is good. All boxes ticked and appear to be working well, for Wi-Fi, tested on 3 networks, Bluetooth, with good range and holding on well - again depending on attached gear, GPS for mapping applications - locking on quickly and staying so - and also NFC talking to other gear and payment terminals in shops. Again, check your region for what's included/supplied/working with all this stuff.

Security seems good with an under-glass optical fingerprint scanner and face unlock working together well, or indeed in isolation, in all-but the darkest conditions for face. Fingerprint scanning software, though never going to be as good as ultrasonic in my experience, makes registering easy/quick and in use, reliable. All this was, again, available on the G84 so I can assume that it worked as well.

The 5000mAh battery is the same in both units, but anything like the fast charging of Moto's more expensive models is not present. No chance of the 125W charging of the high-end units or even the 68W of the mid-range. No, here, we have 30W wired and no wireless. I guess something has to give and personally, I'm OK with the 30W wired charging but have really come to rely on wireless (overnight) charging, inefficient and bad for the planet as I'm told it is. 30W wired is no slouch however and certainly better than it used to be with these lower-mid-range phones - and this one can be charged up in under an hour and a half. But the 5000mAh battery is sound as a pound! Really well-performing, getting through 2 days of moderate/light use. The 10% Reading Test I do returned excellent result at well over 2 hours. You can always add a 3rd party Qi coil for a fiver from Amazon as long as you're OK wielding a case.

HelloUI is the new-look MyUI from Moto and every phone released by them now comes with it. Even, yes, down here at this price-point. And it's very pretty, been redesigned in terms of front-end, colours, display options, all those great Moto Gestures which I have written about so much - all present and correct. The UI is very Vanilla - like a Pixel in many ways sticking to the tried and tested, but with Moto's sprinkling of genuinely useful additions, including some AI sneaking into some settings like CrystalTalk for reducing background noise on VOIP calls and whatever Google make available, like Gemini Live! It goes deeper than ever now as Moto prioritises security in keeping with what Google are doing as they evolve Android. As I say, I have written loads about HelloUI now, so check out my linked-to reviews above, especially the recent ones where I dig into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Moto's Smart Connect works brilliantly with the G85, wirelessly of course - only the very top phones get wired support, but actually, wireless is so good, I really don't think, armed with a reliable network connection in your space, wired is becoming unnecessary. Never thought I'd hear myself say that, being a big HDMI-Out fan for so long! Now of course sometimes a situation may arise where a network can't be relied on, then a cable becomes like gold dust. But networks are generally getting very good these days and the hospitality sector gearing themselves up generally for customer's needs. Anyway, it works perfectly here. I shall point you to my Smart Connect Review and Features piece on my Blog as all the details are there, so click on through and see what's so great about it! And it's amazing that Moto are including all the hooks to make it work in even their lower-end phones now. Kudos.

So now back to the original question about the Motorola Edge 50 Neo which is my current darling of the range! What do you get extra over the G85 here by paying the extra £100 (or, as I say, just now £70)? Well, for starters you get wireless charging - admittedly it's only at 15W but that's perfectly good enough for overnighters like me. You also get 68W charging (though still no brick in the box in this region) so significantly faster charging when needed. You get a much smaller phone, which, for one-handed use, is much better than the G85's bigger display for me - though some would argue this the other way as you can see more! There's also no premium-look/feel edges on the Edge 50 Neo, rather a flat screen. Because it's smaller, you get a smaller battery - though in my testing these two really are as good as each other. You do get Moto's first promise of 5 Android OS updates on the Neo and Security patches to 2029, unlike here. You also get IP6/8 dust/water resistance as well as MIL-STD-810H compliancy, which is just amazing. It's becoming a hard act to beat already, don't you think, for the price difference? But I haven't finished yet! One of the big ones for me on the Neo is a proper Always on Display (the same as was introduced for the Razr 50 Ultra), not present on the G85. It's been a long time coming, but hurrah - perhaps we've turned the corner now, grown out of the (in some way excellent) Peek Display and arrived with this much more useful standard, sipping lightly at the battery via the efficient chipset. You also get another camera stuffed in there with OIS and 3x optical zoom and 512GB/12GB RAM as standard on the Neo (though no microSD). It really feels like a tough act to follow, for the price-difference, but do click through above to my full review.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing much wrong with the G85, a mid-range phone at a decent price with an amazing pOLED screen, great build quality with a premium feel, a very (what we used to call) stock Android experience in terms of software, microSD for loads of storage, the whole Moto secure stuff built right in as well as the excellent Smart Connect, very well-performing speakers, long-lasting battery - the list goes on. Trouble is, that in my opinion, if you have the extra £70/£100 to spare, you can get so much more for the bit more cash with the Edge 50 Neo. This G85 is still recommended however, especially if someone likes the styling and wants a screen that's a bit bigger. Spoiled for choice by Moto!

The Arctic Convoy (2023)

This is a WWII drama based on some fact but expanded to a degree, in order to add dramatic extension. It's 1942 and Hitler is successfully invading Russia. In order to help the Russians, the allies are providing arms and supplies across the top of the Atlantic, towards the Arctic sea. Our story follows one such ship, part of a convoy, and the events of their journey from Iceland to Murmansk in Russia with supplies.

It's a Danish film, originally called Konvoi. The ship we're onboard is run by a civilian sailor crew, not military, so they are not really trained for combat and rely on the allied forces to protect them from the air and sea via escorting, within the convoy. Due to some dodgy intelligence on the part of the British it seems, the convoy was dispersed mid-way across, leaving each to their own devices, for fear that the Germans were launching an indefensible attack from their bases in Norway with U-Boats and bombers. Turns out in the end that this was not true.

The captain, Skar, played well by Anders Baasmo, had to deal with a frightened and inexperienced crew, including a first mate, Mork, who had been previously traumatised by losing his own ship when he, too, was a captain. He was played by Tobias Santelmann and the pair of them were clearly the acting talent, along with radio operator/coder Ragnhild, played by Heidi Ruud Ellingsen. The three of them did a convincing job.

Skar was highly motivated to get the supplies through at any cost, or die trying, to give the best chance to the Russians to put an end to the German advance north - thus protecting his Norway and the rest of Europe. Mork's motivation was to keep the crew safe at any cost, for nobody to die - and therein lay the conflict between them, with Ragnhild often playing mediator/referee.

How much of the drama onboard was based on fact, I'm not sure - we'd need to consult an historian to find out - but it plays out well. The building of tension has been done well and scene after scene of perilous, harrowing incident keeps the eyes wide and mouth open! There's a hairy scene where the untrained crew are hanging off the side of the ship with poles, pushing mines away from the vessel and others with the stress of isolation waiting for bombers to see if they land one on them.

It sometimes comes across as a kind of low-budget, made-for-TV film, but that doesn't take anything away from the depth of the thriller - its trump card being that it's generally based on truth. At the end of the film there are summaries of the facts put on the screen which depicts the event in history and acknowledges the 4000 lives lost overall due to these kinds of convoy operations. I'd suggest that people watch it to learn about what was going on up there and how ordinary folk had to deal with the dreadful perils of war. It's doing the rounds on various streaming channels as I write.