The Salt Path (2024) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

The Salt Path (12a) is the film adaptation of the international best selling memoir of the same name by Raynor Winn. It covers a transformative period in her and her husband, Moth's, life after being swindled out of their home and farm in Staffordshire - and at the same time, Moth getting a devastating diagnosis of CBD or Corticobasal Degeneration Disease. A rare and progressive neurodegenerative condition which is characterized by gradually worsening problems with movement, speech, and memory.

As they are finally evicted from their beloved home, they decide the best antidote to all this terrible circumstance is to go walking. With the small amount of money they have remaining, Raynor (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs) buy a decent quality tent, a pair of sleeping bags, a few other camping essentials and head off to the South West Coast Path starting in Minehead, Somerset.

The core of this incredible story is the bond of this couple who, "For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health" truly live up to those traditional marriage vows and they are a strength greater than the sum of their union. Anderson and Isaac's performances are spellbinding as the intrepid couple, as we see them tackling the beautiful and varied topography of Britain's South West coastline. Slowly traversing down steep hills, along rocky beaches and climbing endless steps hewn into the cliff sides - camping wherever they can (as Moth's condition occasionally flares up) and sometimes encountering the wrath of locals walking their dogs - "You Can't Camp Here!" they cry!

The long walk is punctuated with short flashbacks to events that led to their homelessness. The only slightly fortunate coincidence was that their son and daughter were both of the age that university and a gap year, funded by their own meagre savings, were just on the horizon as they packed up their family house. Otherwise the couple received a weekly benefit of £48 provided by a government tax credit due to Moth's inability to work. This was supplemented by the kindness of strangers along the path and some timely public performance speaking in towns.

The rugged landscape combined with the ever-changing British weather could be thought of as a character in its own right here - and on occasion, seemed to be tormenting our main protagonists. At other times, different natural elements uplifted their entire outlook. Most of all, this is a tale of love, courage, togetherness and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. As the credits rolled on the 1h 55m film, it left me with a feeling of pure joy!

What I use my Smartphone for...

I've been reflecting on this question recently, considering the rising cost of flagship phones, the amazing feature-sets of Android mid-range phones and super prices and capabilities of even the cheapest budget ones. So could I live with a cheaper, simpler phone, I wondered, leaving all the AI-shenanigans and top-end, expensive, best-of-everything to those who really need it all (or have plenty of cash).

So, what do I use my Smartphone for? My daily routine is depicted here, bit of a simple brainstorm really, along with headings to describe my use and verdict at the end, answering my own question!

In bed in the morning
Checking GMail
Checking MeWe
Checking Inoreader
Checking Google News
Using Instapaper (for use later on PC)

In bed at night
TikTok until tired enough to sleep
Smart Audiobook Player - sending me to sleep

Exclusively used on phone
Phone
SMS/RCS (and backup/restore)
Tapo - for Smart Home Light Plugs
Camera
Podcast Addict
AA (vehicle rescue service - if ever needed)
What3words (if ever needed)
Google Wallet - for paying in shops and loyalty cards
Google Authenticator
Counting Steps (when I'm on a health kick)!
Smart Watch stuff

Exclusively used on PC
Audacity
Amolto
MSPublisher
Plex

Can use on a phone (if needed, if away from PC) but always on PC if I can
Google Drive
Playing Music
Watching video/film
Gemini/Chrome
Checking weather
Social Media
Calculator
Calendar
Location Sharing in Google Maps
File Management
Find Hub (formerly Find My Device)
Google Keep
IMDb
MSTeams
Thunderbird
Google Meet
Google Lens
Banking

Google Photos

Photo editing
Amazon shopping
Royal Mail stuff
Clock/alarms/alerts/Notifications
Wikipedia
Reading news
…and more, I'm sure!

Verdict
I’m sure there are gaps, but pretty much as many services I can, I access routinely via my PC, not phone. Yes, no doubt a reflection of not having much of a life (as others might see it!) but also that it just seems so much better to me, all round, to use a big monitor, keyboard and mouse if I can, over squinting at a tiny screen that I need glasses to see! Much else of what I do seems to be for TechToy or Phone Reviewing purposes/tinkering. I think that smartphones, for me, have just become playthings - which means that I really can - if I choose - use a very simple, cheap phone which will meet pretty much all I want to do. After that, it’s unnecessary, but desirable preferences - like macro, good speakers, AoD, PC Modes etc. Not that I don't want to play with phones - I love doing that and it's great to see what's going on in the evolving techsphere, so don't think that this reflective piece/brainstorm means that I've lost interest - more a stock-taking exercise!

Little Bone Lodge (2023)

Also known as The Last Exit for an American release, this 90-minute film has a fair bit going for it. Directed by Matthias Hoene (Cockneys vs Zombies) it's classified as a horror/thriller, but the horror is more about body-horror than anything that will scare the living daylights out of the viewer. It's more subtle than that and has some nice twists and turns along the way.

Vanessa Redgrave's daughter Joely Richardson (Nip/Tuck, Anonymous) plays the lead amongst a British cast including Sadie Soverall (Saltburn, Arcadian), Neil Linpow (who also wrote the story) and Harry Cadby - these forming the main key figures in the story. The story is about an isolated Scottish house in which Mama (Richardson), daughter Maisy (Soverall) and Pa (Roger Ajogbe) live. One wild stormy night, two men, Jack (Linpow) and Matty (Cadby), turn up on the doorstep asking for help as they'd had a car accident. Mama was very reluctant to let them in, but did in the end.

Jack was unconscious and had something pole-like sticking out of his torso which Mama proceeded to remove - and stitch up the hole (claiming to be an anaesthetist by profession) to save his life. They had no phone. Or TV. Or anything to connect them with the outside world much and Mama was strangely overprotective of Maisy - who came across throughout as a childlike figure defying her chronological age. Pa is in a wheelchair and Mama has to inject him with something every few hours to keep him comfortable. As you can see, it's a very odd little house and family, the truth about which comes out later!

Everything is not all as it seems with Jack and Matty, either - as Matty also comes across as childlike and sometimes uncontrolled, with Jack having to calm him. Turns out that they are brothers and Jack's role is to look after Matty as he's had a background of mental health issues. Mama takes Jack to his overturned car to collect something that will help calm Matty and when they are there, she sees a dead body in the back of it. Jack whips out a gun and here starts the outflow of the truth about the brothers and their criminal activity - they're basically on-the-run from the law.

So, that's about all the setup you need to know in order to enjoy the unfolding of what's going on, what has gone on and what's going happen as we head towards the grand finale. It's nicely paced with reveals coming out on a well-timed schedule, keeping interest high, edge-of-the-seat often, tense, dark and suspenseful - no silly jump-scares. It's certainly character-driven with a small cast and mostly shot in one location. There are some lovely visuals of the eerie Scottish landscape and backdrop, through the wild weather.

The central performances are very good indeed, particularly the two female leads who turn their delivery of shock, horror, thrills and anxiety well as the story unfolds and twists arrive. And the story is quite nicely crafted - a bit far-fetched ultimately but there's a satisfying outcome for those who stick around. And you should. Few would be disappointed. It's out there on various streaming services, but don't forget the alternative title.

Motorola Edge 60

The first thing that struck me when opening the box holding the Edge 60 is how remarkably similar it is to the Edge 60 Fusion. On checking the specifications for the two models, the similarities are clearly not just physical. Furthermore, third-party case-makers are actually listing their cases as suitable for both phones. So I guess it's clear! I was thinking that this would be a comparison with last year's Edge 50, but maybe not!

The second thing that struck me was the quite significant perfumy smell (present even actually before opening the box), which I think has been made stronger than it used to be! I guess people must like this as they've been doing it for some years now. Can't say I'm a fan, but perhaps as a chap in his 60's I'm not the appreciative target demographic!

The third thing to strike me was the quad-curved screen. We've seen left/right curves of course over the years - some waterfall outrageous curves - but more recently subtle, lending a classy and premium feel. I was expecting the top/bottom curves to be the same as left/right but they're not - they're more subtle and I, for one, find them very attractive and lovely to use as the finger slides over them with various swipes. But we'll come to the screen in due course.

MotorolaUK PR have sent this over for to us at Phones Show Chat to review, incidentally, but I've not been dictated to in any way regarding my opinion of what I find and will say here exactly that - as I'm sure that they, and more importantly, you, would have me do. But anyway, the box is first as always and it's a white one! Inside is a USB-C to USB-C cable, a hard semi-cut-out case for protection (which is very nice, colour-matched with the phone, but very slippery - much more so than the back of the phone), pokey SIM Card tool, papers, Energy Rating sticker and that's about it. No charger.

I used my Motorola Razr 50 as the source for setup/restore, which it did wirelessly over my home network, no offer of a cable option this time. Coming from another Moto, as one might expect, home screen layouts are all in place, as many apps as Google's system allows signed in (excluding financials of course, understandably for security), settings preferences all the same, toggles thrown as they were on the Razr - it really is very impressive these days (especially when doing this from two devices from the same firm).

The dimensions of the phone are 161.2 x 73.1 x 7.9mm and weighing 179g it's stealth-like! It's beautifully slim around the plastic frame as the glass edges come round to meet it with a nicely razor-thin volume rocker and power button on the right and USB-C port, one of the stereo pair of speakers and SIM Card Tray on the bottom edge. And Edge is the word. Without a case on, it's all edge. I know there's divided opinion about the pragmatics around curved screens and flat these days, but I fail to see how anyone can not be impressed by the look, feel and finish of the Edge 60's styling here. By the way, there's no dedicated left-side Moto AI key on this phone (like these is on some other 2025 models) but I'll come to the whole AI thing later! This Pantone Gibraltar Sea colour they describe as a canvas-inspired silicone finish or nylon-like texture. To me it feels like some sort of cloth, but it would seem not! It's very nice to the touch though and does afford (certainly more) grip (than the supplied case). There's also a kind of bright green - Shamrock (which has a leather-like silicone back) and a purple-like Plum Perfect (with sandpaper-like texture).

We have got used to Moto knocking it out of the park with their P-OLED screens and this is no exception. Once again a gorgeously bright, colourful and vibrant screen which is capable of reaching 4,500nits in auto mode out in the sun. It has a refresh rate of 120Hz, ratio of 20:9 and pixel count of 1220 x 2712 - which makes for 446ppi. It's a 6.67" panel but the phone feels smaller than that because of the quad-curving. To me, it feels more like a 6.5" screened device. It's protected by Gorilla Glass 7i from Corning, which seems to be a poor man's Victus but certainly a mid-tier leg-up from Gorilla Glass 3 and 5. Improved drop performance, enhanced scratch resistance - on top of any benefits brought to the phone by IP-ratings and more which I'll come to in a minute.

The phone arrived with Android 15 in charge with a Moto promise of 3 OS updates, so up to and including Android 18. Google Security patches swiftly updated to March 2025 and Moto promises 4 years of those, taking users to April 2029. Sadly, this is one of the devices where you can expect Motorola to auto-install various applications from their partners when the phone gets any kind of update. Bloat, we call it. Presumably keeping the price of the hardware down. On this occasion it was Ball Sort Puzzle, Amazon Music, Temu Shopping, Happy Color, Solitaire and Monopoly Go! Fortunately, these were all uninstallable, but you have to keep an eye open for more. Pre-installed on the phone (with no choice during setup) were Opera, Booking (dot) com, LinkedIn, Perplexity and Adobe Scan AI PDF. These are also uninstallable, but in actual fact, the last two might be useful to leave as they are to some degree baked into some of the other Moto apps. Depending on whether or not you have any interest in or intention to use AI!

Whipping out the SIM Card Tray using the provided tool, it was clear that there was some resistance, reassuringly 'sealed' around the edges to meet with the ingress protection which feels like is becoming standard for Moto candybar phones these days, budget, mid-tier or flagship. Yes, we have IP6/8 rating, IP6/9 and to top it all off, the phone is also MIL-STD-810H compliant. So pretty much whatever you're likely to throw at it - or indeed it, at! Surprisingly, inside the back of the SIM Card Tray is a space for a second nanoSIM Card or microSD Card so users can mix and match as they like, especially given that the phone can also be used with an eSIM. The world is your oyster!

The Edge 60 can be bought in various storage/RAM configurations - this one supplied has 512GB storage and 12GB RAM, which is the top one. There's also 256GB/8GB and 256GB/12GB depending on market and/or operator (if buying on contract). 256GB being the baseline storage is just great and 512GB, at least for me, is oodles more than enough! Added to which, this phone has a microSD Card slot, as I said earlier, meaning that you can expand the storage yet again - I'm sitting here on 1.5TB all-in! Data transfer speeds to/from the internal storage utilise UFS 4 and in my tests here it flies - even compared to my (much more expensive) champ - Sony Xperia 1 Mk VI.

There's also a RAM Boost function which uses some of your storage as RAM if you want it to. Here, it arrived with 12GB+4GB turned on and something I'd not seen before - AI Auto (using AI learning, optimise RAM use by up to 12GB) which I guess means that it works out for itself, depending on what demands you put on the system, how much it switches. Not quite sure how this works, however, as this system has never been on-the-fly, rather having to reboot the phone after any changes made. Anyway, with 12GB here I contend that nobody needs to be engaging this function as the system keeps many more tasks open than the vast majority of people are going to readily use or notice if it didn't!

Driving the operation is a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 (4nm) which was the same as last year's Edge 50 Neo. It feels snappy enough in operation and those who seem to know, compare it with a SnapDragon 7-series, maybe the Gen 3. I don't see any slowdown here and unless a person is pushing gaming to the limits, it will be just fine for 95% of uses for 95% of people. For those demanding that extra 5% performance, they certainly would be looking somewhere other than mid-tier devices in this price range anyway. I've been testing car racing games here and pressing the AI functions (which I'll come to) and it doesn't appear to flinch.

The speakers seem decent enough for the majority of users. They are not the loudest, but unlike other phones which push volume so as to make music sound distorted and tinny, these don't. They cap the volume to keep the quality good. Playing around with Dolby Atmos I have found that the best sound for most of the music I like to listen to is with Spatial Audio selected - but others make prefer to use Smart Audio, Music, Film, Game or Podcast settings instead, or the Custom option, within which there are frequency sliders to manually adjust/tweak. I think the bottom line here is that the volume won't blow out the quality, as I say - and the phone has found a good balance in that approach.

There's no 3.5mm audio-jack so head/earphones by wire are out of the USB-C port or via Bluetooth. Tested with Google's own USB-C wired earphones here and it sounds excellent. Bluetooth v5.4 is here and as you'd expect, it sounds great, particularly when paired up with Moto's own Buds+ which I reviewed along with the Edge 50 Pro last year or better still, as you might expect, Sony's WH-1000XM4 headphones! No complaints with audio via cans either with wire or BT.

As for HelloUI, Moto's software layer over Android, it remains as attractive in so many ways. The ways in which most other OEMs just seem to get it wrong but Moto retains enough of a flavour of AOSP from back in the AndroidOne days, whilst adding genuinely useful functions and gestures that don't bog the system down or get in the way. Kudos to them. Stuff like 3-finger screenshot, chop-chop to turn on the torch, swivel-swivel to turn on the camera, attentive display that stays on when you're looking at it, edge-lighting for notifications, control panel in gaming, themes, fonts, personalisation of elements - there are loads of them to play around with in the Moto-dedicated app and settings. Some of which have been borrowed from others, some of which others have borrowed - between them all I think Moto gets the balance right. Adding enough but not confusing the user.

I'm going to throw in one gripe, one complaint, into that mix, however - and that's the Always on Display - or lack of here. It's a deal-breaker for me, personally and sends me off to the Play Store to find a 3rd party one - but I guess most won't really care. I thought that with the arrival of a 'proper' AoD with the Razr phones, and even on last year's much cheaper Edge 50 Neo, we'd turned a corner and away from Moto's Peek Display. Super as it was - I want an AoD now. And a good bright one like with the two aforementioned devices - not a wishy-washy one (as per Pixel phones and many others) - which similarly sips at the battery, doesn't gulp. I wrote about Peek Display time and time again in amongst my loads of Motorola reviews over the years - search my blog and you'll find them (short summary below). It was great in its day - but please Moto - let's move on. You have proved you can do AoD brilliantly well now.

So anyway, gripe over, Motorola's 'Peek' arrangement really is decent-enough (for most). It wakes up with movement of any kind and shows the incoming notifications as a badge. If you touch/hold each of them you get a deep-dive summary of what the notification is about. Let go and it goes away. Drag your finger to the fingerprint scanner area and the phone opens up the notification source and takes you directly to the app/service to read it. I loved this system for years and was surprised that nobody emulated it. And if Moto hadn't teased us by showing that there's a better way, I'd have been OK with it. But they have. And there is. And it should be here!

The lock screen arrangements are present and as last reported - with the user able to adjust content, clock size and style, shortcuts to various widgets, style of notifications, shuffle it around, resize, add elements and so on. It's a system that works well and following a double-tap on the sleeping screen, you can get straight to the lock screen with all this stuff. There's also lift to wake and coupled with the very good face recognition the phone has, you can be straight in. The face recognition, incidentally, is quick and easy to set up, unlike the old days! So yes, there's lift to wake, nudge to wake, tap to wake - no doubt all influencing elements that made Moto exclude a proper Always on Display! (I won't start on that again!)

Smart Connect (formerly Ready For) works as perfectly as it does with any modern Moto phone, by cable or wirelessly here. Use a cable method to keep the battery topped up too. You get all the usual activities and services - App Streaming, Mobile Desktop, Phone on PC, Webcam, Files (manager), Hotspot, Smart Clipboard, Cross Control with unified mouse, keyboard, tablet or any other connected device and their own Share Hub. I've written about Smart Connect on my blog for a deeper dive and yes, it all works beautifully (particularly for the hot-desking multi/Windows PC user). Nobody else is doing this like Moto is. Not even Samsung's DeX now (though it will be interesting to see what Samsung and Google do with Android 16's Desktop mode as they collaborate).

I was mentioning earlier that there's no Moto AI Key on the left of the phone. Some of the 2025 devices do have this and it seems to be a hardware feature that the firm is adding to their more premium handsets. Razr 60 Ultra, Edge 60 Pro. The AI functionality seems to be similar, however, on most of these 2025 unit, but it's just a case of how you get into it. Those without a button need to access it by an on-screen optional button, an optional double-press of the power key, double-tap on the back of the phone or by voice. Those with a button can use it much like Nothing's Essential Key button with press and long-press. So that brings us nicely into Moto AI then! I think most of the tools are present on the phone as are on my Razr 50 and which I summarised in a blog post a while ago, so no need to repeat it all here - feel free to click through. There's loads to unpack!

Since that summary, Moto have added extra functionality to Moto AI however and changed a thing or two. In the App Tray, up the top, there are some tabs. One is the standard Apps listing, the second is Newsfeed, again, summarised in my post, above, but the Journal which was present then has disappeared - I think in lieu of the new Moto Notes app. So now, when you take a screenshot, make a recording, photo, text or whatever via the Moto AI UI, it gets saved into Memories. Finding Memories (because the Journal is now gone) is then tricky - by voice, search or eventually I found a section in the Moto AI app's Settings under Responses>Memory. That Memory area needs a shortcut (or app of its own). I get the feeling that Moto AI is certainly a work in progress and they're sorting out what should go where and how it all interacts. But most of it really is as I described via that link above, so do please click through and digest all the goodness. Inside the Moto Notes app, there's also an Auto-sync with Google Drive option and it then seems to upload to a newly-made folder called Moto Notes. Seems to do what it is supposed to though - of course one has to give Moto permissions to write to one's Google Drive account etc. which might not suit some. As I say, I think it's a learning time for Moto and I am certainly feeding back to them on my findings, frustrations and fumblings!

Everyone's favourite topic it seems with phones these days is cameras - and my least favourite! Which is why I usually hand this one off to GSMArena. They deep dive the whole camera thing in every review they write, littered with helpful examples, samples and insights. I openly admit that I don't really understand digital photography, being much more of a film user back in the day, and count myself now among the many, many phone users out there who reckon that (pretty much) any modern phone's camera will do pretty much everything that is needed - and that results, at best, are going to be posted to social media - not blown up to A3 poster and put on a wall. However, I do like to run through what I find in the camera UI when I review, so here we go.

First things first and that excellent Macro functionality via the autofocus in the wide-angle lens. I do enjoy using this and taking photos of close-up objects (which I enjoyed with film back in the day with 1:1 rendering lenses on full-frame 35mm). I digress again! The three lenses/cameras in the phone are a 50MP f/1.8 main unit with OIS, a supporting 10MP f2 telephoto with 3x optical zoom and OIS and that 50MP f/2 wide-angle with the AF/Macro. The main camera can shoot video at 4K@30fps or 1080p@240fps (with gyro-EIS) and round the front there's a 50MP f/2 Selfie which can do the same video at 4K@30fps with a slightly reduced frame rate at 1080p@120fps.

So yes, in the main Photo UI you get buttons for quick-selecting 3x zoom, 2x zoom, 1x normal, o.5x wide-angle and a dedicated Macro button. The Macro can also work automatically if you let it via settings and will switch over when it thinks it is close enough to the subject. There's a whole bunch of filters which can be added pre-shooting. Then there's Portrait mode which in my tests here are very pleasing with various depth of field effects which can be set at 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm for angle of view, Pro Mode gives the user fine control if they want to go manual for focus, white balance, shutter speed, ISO and EV and under the More button we have Scan for documents, Night vision (which in my tests seems to pull light from nowhere!), Panorama, Ultra Res (using the full 50MP with big file sizes resulting), Photo Booth (which is like a passport photo booth giving a user 4 shots, 3 seconds apart (on the right is my mad attempt!), Timelapse and some other stuff for playing about with. Digging deeper into settings we have all sorts of other stuff as you'd expect including AI Audio for video (Audio Zoom), smile/gesture capture, grids, levellers etc. I think that the Moto Camera app's UI is a nice one and, as I say, for the vast majority of people who are not going to pixel-peep (or even know what that means!) it's an enjoyable experience.

I was talking earlier about the very efficient face unlock and this is supported by an under-display, optical fingerprint scanner to get in. Registration is similarly quick and painless and in my experience since testing the phone, even though it's said to be second best to ultrasonic (and certainly capacitive) it works just fine. Never failed for me and quick. In terms of connectivity we have 5G of course, which I've tested for data and voice and works well in my test areas/subjects, WiFi 6 which, although not the latest version works perfectly well for me here in my test with good connectivity for data/streaming, NFC support here for paying with the likes of Google Pay and GPS which seems to lock on to location quickly and holds on well. I covered Bluetooth earlier and yes, excellent range (depending on other gear used of course) and clarity. Anything I've plugged into the USB-C (2.0) seems to work well with OTG functionality - not only the PC mentioned earlier but also SSD storage, headphones (with or without dongle/adapters) and chargers of course.

Speaking of which, the phone has a 5,200mAh battery (for this market) and 68W wired charging capability. Sadly there's no Qi wireless charging which would have been, along with an Always on Display (did I mention that?!), the icing on the cake. I have a 100W GaN charger here and using that I get decent-enough charging speeds - a full charge from flat in well under an hour can't be bad. I do, once again, however, question how much it would have cost to add a Qi coil - especially given that last year's model (Edge 50) had it. Still, I guess Moto have done their research and conclude that not enough people are interested. The battery performs sparklingly well incidentally, as usual with Moto phones, heading for two and a half hours on my standard 10% Reading Test and if pushed without a charge, well into, if not to the end of, day 2.

It's a super little phone, very dinky in the hand, particularly for those brave enough to use without a case, the 512GB/12GB version is £379 in the UK direct from Moto (not made it yet to Amazon at time of writing) and represents super value for money. The screen is gorgeous in every way, the Smart Connect works beautifully, loads of storage and microSD, chipset is perfect good for all-but the most demanding, decent enough promise of support going forward, the speakers sound great on balance, it's got a super camera setup, IP ratings galore - even Military compliance - and the makings of some great AI features which evolve as we go along - which I'm sure will feature in every update. Yes I can whine about lack of Qi Charging and Always on Display but Moto, no doubt, given their research, most likely think I'm in the minority - and these are my only two quibbles. Otherwise, thoroughly recommended at this price. (This final photo is one of mine demonstrating how the phone looks after a 3rd Party Always on Display has been added - in this case, Peek AOD - Always On Display by Dubiaz, available in the Play Store.)

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) - A Guest Review by Chad Dixon

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (12a) is the latest offering in the iconic film franchise and possibly the last. Even before a second of the film rolls, we are greeted by Mr Cruise himself, talking to camera, thanking the Director, Chris McQuarrie (at the helm of his fourth MI title), the remaining cast and crew - and finally the audience for taking the time to come out to see this on the big screen. Nice!

Following on directly from the final events from the previous outing, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023), we first see Ethan Hunt (Cruise), in the obligatory "This Mission, if you choose to accept it" scene. But this time using a TV/VHS combo unit (which felt quite nostalgic for me) and the message is directly from President of the US, Sloane (Angela Bassett). On the tape she pleads with Hunt to give himself up and bring in the 'Cruciform KEY'.

Ethan initially feels that he has to follow a different plan as he knows Gabriel (Esai Morales), the existential bad guy in this story, is wanting the key back to place "The Entity" Rogue AI under his influence and achieve total dominance over the World's nuclear arsenal.

Starting in London, Ethan begins gathering his usual team but unfortunately loses one in a massive bomb blast under the city. He finds out it was indeed set by Gabriel and that he has also stolen a crucial one-of-a-kind decryption tool from the lab Hunt's deceased colleague was working from.

As it's clear the AI is getting more powerful by the hour, Hunt decides the only plan of action to defeat it is to hand himself, and the key, to the US authorities - as they are the only ones with the hardware he needs to help him and the team succeed - and thus save everyone on the Planet!

Unlike previous outings in this franchise, we don't start with a massive all-out set-piece. Instead, there is quite a bit of exposition in the first half-hour, but it sets up nicely for the second act when the action really ramps up. Sequences are choreographed and edited brilliantly so you are literally on the edge of your seat. The 2 hour 50 minute runtime does sound a bit long - but honestly, it flies!

I don't really know how Mr Cruise does this stuff at all, let alone at 60+ years old! There's an underwater sequence in a submarine wreck that I can't imagine what sort of rig they needed to construct to achieve the constantly-moving interior peril. There's also a particularly jaw dropping sequence on a bi-plane that is partly shown in the official trailer.

Everyone reprises their roles including Hayley Atwell as Grace, who seems to have buffed-up even more since the last film. Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn has grown the most in his now, sixth appearance in the franchise - and really commands your full attention to the screen. There a couple of notable additions. Hannah Waddingham plays Admiral Neely. An uber-professional US Navy aircraft carrier group commander (who looks pretty good in uniform) and Tramell Tillman as cold war loving, submarine Captain Bledsoe, who initially finds Ethan's plan totally bonkers but becomes an important ally to help him complete this virtually impossible mission!

CMF Phone 2 Pro

The new CMF phone is all the buzz at the moment, mainly because of the staggeringly good value-for-money. Here in the UK, it's £219 for the base model (or even £188 at AmazonUK if you also factor in a pair of, admittedly, last generation, Buds 2). Significant improvements have been made since the CMF Phone 1, though also a couple of odd changes to the modular approach.

I was quite surprised to discover that there was no Nothing app to switch from one Nothing/CMF phone to another. I guess that's something for down the line somewhere. Instead, they rely on the 'standard' Android 'setup' procedure which can be done via the 'setup my new device' option in the Google app wirelessly or with a cable. Coming from the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus, I thought it would be slicker and in-house. Not that there's anything wrong with Google's procedure at this stage - it's pretty polished.

First things first though and the cute-looking box it comes in. I got the orange one though there's also black, white and light green. In the box, there's no power brick of course, but there is a USB-C to USB-C cable, a colour-matched SIM Tray pokey-tool and a beautifully fitting clear and soft TPU case. Love it! And this is no eBay-special from China that just never quite feels like it was designed right - this fits like a glove. Probably only cost them a quid, but made such a difference to me. Well done indeed!

It's slimmer and lighter than last year's model, giving a great feel in the hand - 164 x 78 x 7.8mm and 185g. It's also got an IP rating of 5/4 so certainly better than last year's model which had none, but not up there with the leading pack (outside of this price range). The corners are squared off more than the (2a)'s and it's certainly a big phone, but all the better for seeing, I guess! The footprint reminds me somehow of the Nokia 7 Plus from back in 2018, the first thing that struck me. On the right side, below the power button, is an Essential Key (which I'll come to later). On the left is the volume rocker (which I'm starting to appreciate now over the Android usual position on the right), microphone up top and USB-C port, speaker and microphone down the bottom.

On the back, we have (in the orange colour), a two-tone split (a bit like Pixel phones used to have) with a lighter orange on the top half and darker, below. It feels at first like there's a texture difference between the plastic of the two halves but on closer inspection, I think now not. Like the first phone, there are screws around the back which can be removed and an optional backplate can be added which houses a magnet, MagSafe style. This can be used to clack to MagSafe/Qi2 accessories, some of which CMF are selling. Like the fold-out wallet/stand. I don't have any of these to hand to test so will have to check, along with you, YouTube videos from people who do. And actually, they look pretty good. You can put 2 or 3 credit cards into the folding wallet, then fold it out to provide a desk stand to prop the phone up in portrait.

This whole back cover screw-off thing is different to the first generation, on which you could actually remove the back completely and replace it with other colours. But they didn't have magnets inside. Consequently, with the new phone, if you put a back cover on it, you lose the advantage of thinness and it becomes then thicker than the original. But you do get the benefit of the magnets. But before you get too excited, the phone doesn't have Qi charging - so Qi2/MagSafe charging won't happen! The benefits of the magnets, but not the charging. Oh well. At least you'll be able to mount it to a car dash easily.

It's also got a similar large screw on/off button thingie, bottom right, which can be replaced with a lanyard if desired, to hang the phone around one's neck. Or on a tree! And there's the phone stand which will screw in there too, then fold out for portrait or landscape propping on a desk. You can also buy a power brick from CMF from £39 upwards, depending on which power version you fancy. So yes, to some degree modular still, just different in some ways to the first phone - which seems to be dividing opinion.

Lastly on the tour is the camera cluster, top-right (in landscape), which by design, makes the phone look, along with those screws, kind of industrial - but stylish. And I think that's what they were going for. Style and design. Another couple of accessories are available too for the cameras - but you need to put one of the additional backs on first to use them. When you've done that, there is a fisheye lens and a macro lens which press into place over the additional back, in line with the camera lenses. It's difficult to get hold of these just now, so again, we can only go by those YouTubers who have been sent them for review and the word is that the macro one does indeed get good close-up results, but the fisheye/wide-angle one is not really that much better/different than the wide-angle camera already built-in. Maybe we'll see a telephoto one at some point too.

The phone does look very nicely designed, especially without the additional back on it, fits in my (big) hand very nicely and has a real feeling of something different and classy - but also fun'n'funky - about it!

On firing up the device, it was armed with NothingOS v3 and immediately looks to change that to v3.2 (which I'll come to) with a near-5GB download. Out of the box it has March 2025 Android Security and July 2024 Play System onboard. The latter quickly updated to April 2025 (as most Android phones now seem to have done) and April '25 Security too. The copy/restore (as mentioned above) worked worked beautifully well using the (2a) and a cable, retaining all the settings, layout and apps, Always on Display (which I'll come to), many auto-signed-in (my trust in Google paying off), leaving me to fiddle with the financials!

CMF have done the decent-enough thing here which Motorola could learn from with budget devices, offering 3 Android OS updates (so up Android 18) but more importantly probably, 6 years of Security Patching. So, new in May 2025, this gets users safely supported through to spring 2031. For a £200 phone - that's impressive.

The recurring theme running through my thoughts here is very likely often going to come back to the stock phrase for the price. No more likely than in relation to the screen - the incredibly price-defying 6.77", 1080p, 388ppi, 20:9 ratio, 120Hz AMOLED with 3000 nits of brightness at peak/auto. It's super bright and colourful - not quite up with what Motorola are doing with their screens, but not far off and I can't imagine anyone could complain - even outside in bright conditions. The Achilles Heel might be that it's only Panda Glass and not Gorilla, but CMF have added a factory-fitted screen protector and to be honest, usually the first to rip these things off, I've not even noticed it until now. So maybe I won't, given that it's Panda Glass.

The phone is a 5G one of course and users can choose between two physical nanoSIM slots (though no eSIM support) or use the flip-side for a microSD Card! Hurrah! This is important with the £219 128GB version for sure (which this one is), maybe not so much for the £249 256GB one. If the latter had been available for £30 more, I would likely have paid the extra, but it wasn't. So armed with my 1TB card (and up to 2TB for those who fancy it) I've got 1.128TB (and 256GB buyers, 1.256GB, obviously)! It seems that the vast majority of people are happy to use cloud services these days, not file-manage and carry data like us old farts hoarding our own media, so will be happy with 128GB anyway (and probably not even realise their phone has the slot, let alone even own a microSD Card)! With 128kbps versions of my .mp3 files (instead of the 320kbps versions), some key .mp4 files and a pared-down list of audiobooks, I'm peaking out at about half the 128GB personally. And the rest, along with full-fat versions can, of course, all go on the microSD Card (which it seems to read/write to fast enough for no latency on video tested) with its oodles of space! Copying files from my PC to the phone with a cable to the USB-C port worked fine, as it usually does with Android these days, though as one might expect, not as lightning fast as phones with faster and more powerful chipsets. Oh well - doesn't need doing often here and I'm not in a rush!

The 8GB RAM incidentally, is common to both models and tests so far are showing this to be perfectly adequate, not closing stuff down aggressively in the background and working well with the Mediatek Dimensity 7300 Pro (4nm) chipset. The 'Pro' is an upgrade from last year's non-Pro and CMF are claiming incremental improvements all-round over last year's phone. There seems to be wise money on the new Pro version equating to a SnapDragon 7s Gen 2, used successfully in some of the Motorola Edge, Realme, Poco and Redmi models. The Dimensity feels like it's doing a perfectly good enough job to me - even with some car-racing and certainly 'lighter' games. There's very little impact on speed around the UI, thus proving, again, for everyday use for most people, saving huge amounts of money not buying expensive flagships has little-to-no impact on their use of phones.

Now onto speakers - or in this case, speaker! Yes, there's one, so without head/earphones or peripheral speakers there's no stereo. There's no 3.5mm audio-out socket either (of course) so it's a good job that the Bluetooth v5.3 works beautifully - and indeed wired USB-C earphones, a couple of which I have here to use (without adapter/dongles). Bluetooth is staggeringly good these days even without the higher-level codecs for audio like LDAC (though apparently you can get that if you buy CMF's Buds Pro 2 which I don't have here to test unfortunately, only the non-Pro version). I do have my Sony WH-1000XM4 (Amazon Affiliate Link) headphones, however, which smartly sorts out LDAC for the user and, of course, it reduces all latency and sounds fantastic.

The speaker's output is quite loud but as soon as a finger lingers over the grille at the bottom, it's pretty much all gone! Pushed to 100% though and it's a distorted, tinny mess I'm afraid. Made even worse by the Ultra Volume option! A bit like the one found on the HMD Skyline - both of which really need to be left well alone. CMF's version claims to boost the volume by 50% but it's simply unusable. Maybe for spoken word it could be of use in a large room, but with music it's a disaster! Laying that aside and dropping the regular (non-Ultra option) down to about 80% and it's much more usable for music. If ever there was a case for the use of Wavelet though, this is it. Set on the app's 'Dark' EQ setting it's much, much better - and can, in a pinch, be pushed to 100% - but still not Ultra!

Next is the battery and it's a 5,000mAh one, for which the phone offers 33W wired charging. Seems to do what it says it should, for those of us armed with an appropriately-powered charger, with a full charge in just over an hour and a half. CMF claim "...a day's power in 20 minutes" which in real-world use is subjective as everyone's day is different, but it seems that 20 minutes with a 33W charger should take it from zero up to about a third full in my tests here, so a few hours power anyway. There's no Qi Wireless charging on offer but there is 5W Reverse-Wired, which means that you can think of the phone as a powerbank, plug another device into the USB-C port and expect it to charge the other device's battery. Slowly!

Once the phone is charged, in tests here, the battery performs superbly well. The efficient chipset sipping away at it makes it seem to go on and on. With my average use, it's certainly good for a day and a half - and on a light-use day, two of them! Doing my usual 10% Reading Test I am getting about 2 hours, which is not great compared to many and feels like it's not right really - but repeated tests are about the same, wherever I execute them within the battery percentage scale. I shall do more testing on this as it doesn't really seem consistent with the all-day use.

The firm, like everyone else, are going OTT on claims for their camera system (like it's the most important feature on any phone) and highlighting how it's better than last year's model. And to fair, it is. The main camera is much the same - a 50MP f1.9 unit, but they've added a second 50MP f1.9 unit which has 2x optical zoom capability and third 8MP f2.2 unit for wide-angle, dropping the last generation's 2MP f2.4 Depth one. The camera interface is pretty simple, pretty Apple-like, with swipe-across menu highlighting Night, Portrait, Photo, Video and More. Under More there's Slo-Mo, Time Lapse, Panoramic and Expert (Pro). With the latter you can control EV, ISO, Shutter Speed, White Balance and Focus in the usual way. On the main interface you can switch between the three lenses with a swipe - wide-angle ("0.6"), regular ("1") and 2x optical ("2"). Head for the settings and there's  a bunch more controls including forcing 50MP shots (with big file sizes), filters (with my favourite artsy Lenticular!), HDR, Motion Photo, Grid, etc. Nothing new here much if you're used to fiddling with cameras in phones. Oh, and the Selfie is the same 16MP f2 unit as last year.

As for the performance and output of the camera - I really don't understand digital photography. (Bring back film!) Even the cheapest phone's camera seems to make perfectly good-enough pictures to me, for any use I might put them to online. So yes, I shall shuffle you off once again to our friends at GSMArena who drill down, pixel-peep and give their verdict, presumably for those who really want to blow a photo up to A3 and put it on the wall! Their coverage is here and I continue to appreciate them filling the gap for me. The most notable 'miss' on the camera seems to be the lack of OIS anywhere, so it's tripod time! While you're there you can read their review of this phone too.

The Essential Key is a notable addition on the right side of the device, a button under the power button - which, incidentally, is lovely and 'clicky'. This is a (kind of) AI method taking a lead from the Pixel Screenshot app offering the user a quick-snapshot method to press-to-save whatever’s on the screen, add notes and long-press to record voice notes to each for later reference. And it certainly seems to do what it says on the tin - and for the right person, this will be very useful as a (kind of) scrapbook. My problem with it is, much like many Samsung tools, it doesn't integrate out and/or talk to anything outside of the phone. Even a simple webpage support would be nice - and to be fair, even Google doesn't have that (yet) for their Screenshot app. It's designed (at this stage) therefore to be an on-device function for users to then use, on-device. It doesn't even save anything to a cloud anywhere so even if you swap to a new phone, you just have to start again. 

In order to use it, you long-press the button in order to screenshot whatever is on your screen and whilst holding the button, dictate a voice memo to go with it. Or press once to take the screenshot the same but type a message to go with it. Double-press the button to get to the Essential Space where all your saved stuff is kept. You can listen back to any audio notes you've made, get a transcription of them, and even view summaries that the AI has put together in order to organise tasks, events or whatever data it's scooped up - including words from inside images. Screenshot a calendar page and it gives you a rundown of upcoming stuff which you can then add to a Task List or mark as done. You can then organise your clippings and data into Collections if you want to. There's a lot to unpack here and it needs some using, ongoingly, to make the most of it. Maybe with the upcoming launch of the Nothing Phone 3 they will open it up a bit, not have it locked down to the device.

Nothing OS 3.2 (over 3.0/1) launches with the new hardware (though it will come to the older soon - well, apart from the Essential Key stuff presumably)! They’ve added Essential Space Widgets, allowing users to see the content (or rather some of it, presumably) on the lockscreen and AoD (if selected). In other changes, they’ve added some camera presets, made the Macro and Portrait Modes better (more bokeh) and added AI-powered face and scene classification to their Gallery app, smoother animations, Adaptive Brightness tweaks to make it better, improved colour accuracy, clarity and detail in the camera/video, the 'proper' AoD as mentioned, more icon styles, pre-installed Nothing X App for audio products and more. Discovery ongoing!

Connectivity seems pretty good on all-counts really, WiFi 6 is fine, three routers tested, GPS seems good for locking-on and keeping tracking, 5G cellular, similarly, seems good as I test in various places in North Wales - data reliable and voice reported well on both ends of calls - and the new one over last year's model, NFC. Hurrah! So it can hook up with other NFC-enabled gear and (probably) more importantly for most, pay for your grub at Tesco! It was a gap in the last model which thankfully, even keeping the price down, they've fixed.

Security features work very well - fingerprint, under-display, optical, seems to work first time, every time and Face Unlock was fast to register and then quick in execution, working out glasses on or off by itself. Other security arrangements are all under Google's umbrella (so no fancy Samsung Knox or Moto ThinkShield alike) but I guess that's then as secure as any Pixel out there!

It's a terrific phone for the price - quite staggering really - and would suit 95% of the non-geeky/nerd, undemanding population. The screen is great, the accessories/magnets are fun, there's a microSD Card slot and Dual SIM, the chipset is perfectly adequate as is the RAM, decent amount of update support going forward, excellent battery (apart from my 10% test - more tests ongoing as I can't see that it's right) and decent-enough cable charging speed, And similarly, for the price, apparently the cameras too - for the 95% of people again.

Of course, I'd like a better speaker (or even two of them) and Qi Wireless charging, but really those are my only two gripes. Certainly, once again, for the price. You can get 7 of these for the price of the newly-announced Sony Xperia 1 Mk.VII - and although you get a very specialist premium tool for that cash, it's worth lingering for a moment on the fact. I maintain in closing that my 95% would be very happy to use this and enjoy the fun, quirky approach to the often-stuffy design of smartphones out there. Here's my affiliate link in case you want to buy one at Amazon, for which I thank you. Highly recommended.

The Snow Walker (2003)

I think this has to be one of the most moving films I've ever seen. It's a story of survival, growth, the human spirit, love, friendship and inter-dependency. Nothing much here not to like, nor the way it has been produced, shot and performed.

Barry Pepper (The Green Mile, True Grit) and Annabella Piugattuk carry the film as the two leads and are both totally engaging and absorbing to watch. The story is set in 1953 and starts out introducing us to Charlie, the ex-WWII pilot who lives up in the north of Canada somewhere and is employed to carry goods around to various isolated communities in the arctic's snow and ice in his amphibious seaplane. He rattles around local bars, drinking, womanising - the cocky jack-the-lad around town, over-confident and generally not an attractive character.

He goes to work one day, late as usual, and sets off to carry some barrels of something to an isolated Inuit community. He flies alone and clearly has a schedule of drops. When he turns up to drop off the barrels, two of the men in the community ask him, mostly by gestures and broken English, if they would take a 20-year-old girl from their group to a hospital as she is coughing up blood, suspected TB. At first he refuses, as he's on a schedule, but they offer him some ivory which is worth a lot of cash, so he changes his mind, realising their value.

The girl barely says a word to Charlie on the journey which ends abruptly and tragically as something goes wrong with his plane and they have to crash-land in the middle of nowhere. The radio is broken, the plane irreparable, and nobody knows where they are as he's gone off track in another direction, towards a hospital and not reported it. Presumably as he didn't want his employer to know he's on the make!

The girl doesn't speak hardly any English but he does find out that she is called Kanaalaq. They start to take stock, gather resources, he ranting like a spoiled brat most of the time, she quiet, reflective and thoughtful (most likely wondering how it is that people outside of her culture can't exercise control)! After a few days and resources dwindling, he decided that he will leave her by the plane (as she's sick) and walk off for help/rescue, telling her that he'd then send a plane for her.

A few days pass, his command of survival skills go from bad to worse, eventually ending up being attacked by mosquitos en masse and passing out on the ground. Up pops Kanaalaq to the rescue. She'd clearly been following him, suspecting that he would make a mess of things! So she, the sick one, nurses him back to something approaching health using all her cultural methods and knowledge, resourceful living from nature and the earth. When he's well again, they start walking together and face adventures along the way.

Adventure is not really what the tale is about though. It's about cultural crossover, learning and compassion as they fight to survive, eventually relying heavily on each other as she helps him get stronger whilst declining herself - really in need of that hospital. But she holds up as they lean on each other, bond forming between them, companionship and closeness born from their plight. The story is slow at times, but always gripping and suspenseful as we see the cock-sure, egocentric man change into a generous, thoughtful and kind person.

Director Charles Martin Smith (who has been an actor in The Untouchables and American Graffiti amongst many more) ensures that it's never soppy and sentimental, but rather touching and intelligent. This is helped by the incredibly powerful performance by Annabella Piugattuk in the lead, but also Barry Pepper as Charlie. The pair work well together and have much of the screen time. There are a couple of side-stories going on regarding the search mission, but they really weren't needed.

As a brief aside, I wondered why Annabella Piugattuk's career in acting flatlined, pretty much after this and I discovered that it was because she was so actively involved in her Inuit community that she wanted to focus her time doing that, working in broadcasting within the community, but with little interest for a big Hollywood career.

If you can't find it anywhere else, someone has uploaded it onto YouTube at the time of writing and I'd strongly recommend it.

Dolores Claiborne (1995)

I saw this film years ago, based on a Stephen King novel, but had completely forgotten much about it, so DVD staring at me, I thought I'd give it another shot - and I'm pleased I did. There's a slightly dated feel about it but in some ways that adds to the atmosphere, leaping back and forward in the timeline as we do here with some interesting cinematic colour-shifts to denote the eras.

We start off in the present with Dolores Claiborne struggling with her elderly and infirm employer at the top of the stairs in her house in Maine, where she's live-in carer and has been for over 20 years. Vera Donovan is the employer and she ends up tumbling down the stairs. Next, we see Dolores raking through the implements in the kitchen to apparently find something to cosh her with and finish her off. In comes the mailman and catches Dolores, over the body, rolling-pin in hand, about to deliver the final blow. She doesn't. The viewer knows. But the old woman dies right there, anyway, from her injuries.

Dolores is a known local character in this small town where everyone has lived forever and know each other well. The exception to the rule of people staying in the town is Dolores' daughter, Selina, who we now join in her office in New York working as a journalist/writer. She receives a fax (told you it was dated) telling her that her mother, who she's had nothing to do with for 15 years, has been taken to the police station, suspected of murdering her employer. Selina races to the scene, hooks up with mother, who the local police release to go (to her unlived-in, neglected) home with daughter while they process the 'crime' scene and build their case.

Both of these women are clearly hardened by the knocks of challenging lives and this comes across from both of them as they deal with anyone around them. Selina with more caution and social awareness than Dolores, but it's clear that they are both life-damaged in various ways, which come out later in our story. Which brings us to various flashbacks as we find out about the situation earlier in life when Selina was 13 and her dad was still alive, living in the house, and generally being verbally and physically abusive (watch out for the first one as it's shocking) to Dolores at every irritated opportunity - whilst apparently sharing warmth and kindness to Selina.

Dolores is pushed too far one day and returns some of the abuse, putting him in his place. He's also a bit of a drunk, which makes matters worse for the others. As we skip back to the present, it becomes clear that dad had died back in the day and Dolores was suspected of killing him, which most of the townsfolk remember. Although she was cleared of charges, the incident declared an accident, they keep a distance because of the suspicions, making her even more reclusive and bitter. Selina storms off around this time, not to be seen until the present. It's clear that there's unresolved issues between mother and daughter which are eventually shared with us, along with details of the incidents.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female, Fargo) and Kathy Bates (Diabolique, Titanic) play the two roles perfectly. I think that Bates is wonderful in Misery (1990) but this stretches her further and she plays it beautifully. I loved Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight (2015) but again, this role stretches her in a different way and she responds admirably. Director Taylor Hackford brings out the best in both of them turning this unusual Stephen King story (not supernatural but focusing on the stuff people do to each other), whilst creating chills and thrills in different ways, including smart use of camerawork, colours and focus throughout.

In amongst all this we have Christopher Plummer playing the local copper, determined to prove that Dolores has done the deed, still angry that she 'got away with' blame for the death of her husband years ago. He felt he 'missed out' on a conviction back then, maring his perfect record of 85 other closures. He believed, and still does, that she did it, can't prove it, but is out to make amends. He plays it very nicely, too - a far cry from Captain Von Trapp! Judy Parfitt (Girl with a Pearl Earring) is horribly annoying as Vera the monied, stuck-up employer (mostly via flashbacks) and David Strathairn (L.A. Confidential, Lincoln), chilling and sinister as Dolores' husband. These are the main roles, but the rest of the cast add to the great storytelling and dark, grizzled atmosphere, as it unfolds.

It's also a story about how men in positions of power, particularly in small-town America back in the day, had been free to exercise destruction over women, who end up feeling powerless to change the imbalance. This is highlighted clearly in a scene at the bank and the attitudes of the police officer in charge. It's sad, shocking and moving in equal measure as the viewer gets more absorbed and behind the truth of what's happened. It's beautifully shot and produced, so highly recommended.