A Cure For Wellness - Lonnnnnng creepiness

I'd been looking forward to seeing this since I saw the trailer come out. It's got a funky title, a seemingly interesting premise, and the backdrop looked nice and spooky.

Official movie poster (20th Century Fox)

So, at 2 hours long, this Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean film saga, The Ring, and Rango) movie is not an easy one to stay focused throughout, and it's a bit weird. 

*spoilers ahead*

Lockhart

I'll break the plot down as simply as possible.  Lockhart working for some big business, been promoted to the board, they call him up to talk about a merger with another business in order to save the whole business and make the top tier very rich (including Lockhart - played by Dane DeHaan).  Apparently the top dog (Pembroke played by Harry Groener) who needs to sign off on the merger has gone on a spa break to Switzerland, and sent a letter back saying he's not coming back. Lockhart is accused of dodgy dealings on a previous account he worked on, so the other members of the board send him to Switzerland in order to convince the main boss to come back and sign the paperwork.



Seems a little convoluted, but feasible. 

So off DeHaan goes, the typical swagger-filled arrogant young go-getter, engrossed in his career, thinking it will be a nice trip to Switzerland in and out.

There's a few memorable-ish characters along the way, like the driver who takes Lockhart from the airport through the town to the sanitarium on the hill where the spa and ultimately Lockhart's boss is.

Everyone is looking so happy at the sanitarium having "treatments", DeHaan gets told his boss is busy having one of said "treatments", Lockhart gets snarky, then told to come back at 7pm. He heads out tells driver to take him to hotel, car crash on way back to hotel.

Dr Vollmer

Lockhart wakes up in the sanitarium with a cast on his leg, tries to figure where his boss is. Tries to check out the secret looking areas in the sanitarium, talks to random patients, figures things aren't quite right. Meets a young girl called Hannah (Mia Goth - girl in the poster), as well as the Director of the Sanitarium  Dr Vollmer (Jason Isaacs).

I kind of lost the next hour or so as Lockhart tries to figure out exactly what is wrong, involving some eels, the water, some more eels, some more passive looking people, and some more water and some human experimentation.

Turns out the water is used to help filter eels through people's bodies to produce "the cure" and that is what has been keeping a centuries old baron alive (Dr Vollmer - the Director of the Sanitarium) in order to continue his line by having a child with his sister (Hannah - the young girl). (see I told you this was weird).

Lockhart figures this out, also figures out his leg was never broken, goes looking for Hannah. Turns out Hannah got her first period so is ready to have a kiddo. Vollmer has her in the caves beneath the Sanitarium to rape her and get her pregnant to continue his line of pure blood. Lockhart shows up before Vollmer can do the deed, a fight ensues, and just when Vollmer is about to feed Lockhart to some eels, Hannah smashes him with a spade to the head, he falls in and gets chewed up by those eels. Meanwhile, embers have emerged from the fire that was started during the fight and has set the sanitarium on fire.

Lockhart and Hannah escape, and end up crashing into the other members of the board from his job back home who have come to see what the hell is going on. They try to tell him to go back and help get the top dog Pembroke, Lockhart says "nope", and he and Hannah ride off together. The end.  😐

Confusing as hell, wayyyyyyyyyy too long, interesting concept but tried way too hard to make it creepy. Just ended up being convoluted and I left the cinema thinking "what just happened?"Not worth watching in a cinema, and only watch on Netflix if you're fully awake, have time on your hands and a fetish for eels.

4/10

Microsoft Lumia 550 - Windows 10 Mobile on a budget

When I was back in the UK this Christmas, I was doing some supermarket shopping and happened to stumble upon the Lumia 550 on the shelf advertised for £99. I'd already heard of the device, knowing that it would be debuting with Windows 10 Mobile installed on it alongside the higher specced 950 and 950XL.
I asked to purchase one and was told that it was locked to a network and that they have to remain locked for a year before they will unlock it officially.

I went away and decided that I needed to get one of these somehow to try out the latest iteration of Windows 10 Phone/Mobile/for Mobile. Friend of mine was coming over from Chicago, so I asked to pick me up an unlocked version. Retailed at $139 (USD), and came out at $153 after taxes added.


So now I have one in my hands, and I got the chance to start it up, play around with it and use it as my daily driver for a few days. Here's what happened:

1) The device is packaged well, with just a charger. No earphones, no removable USB cable, nothing. But what would you expect for this price. It's a bargain.


2) For the price, the screen on this phone is excellent. Bright colours, not too bad viewing angles.

3) Despite being a budget phone, the performance of this device is not bad at all, and is 4G LTE.

Those three points had me feeling pleasantly satisfied with myself for investing in such a great value phone. Maybe I'd sell my iPhone, maybe I'd subscribe to Groove Music, maybe  I'd consider an upgrade to a 950 or 950XL at some point....


Then, Windows 10 Mobile happened.

I've loved the concept of Windows Phone and their live tile interface since it came out. I had a Samsung Omnia 7 and thought it was great. It really is awesome. However, since the days of Windows Phone 7, things haven't really moved on in terms of the platform. I mean, how long do you want to fill the app-gap? Its not as noticeable anymore, but it is noticeable.

Also, if you're going to release a new operating system, make sure it's ready for primetime. Windows 10 Mobile is nowhere near ready. It had 38 updates waiting for me right out of the box. And those updates took over an hour to download, install and finish. Then after that, there was an entirely new OS update 10.0.10586.29, which took about 2 hours to download, prepare to install, then install. Not good Microsoft, not good at all.

Anyway, I finally got to using the device and it looks very pretty. But, it isn't always responsive, and then there's the settings app which looks much nicer than the settings of Windows Phone past, and matches the desktop settings app, but, still is confusing for finding some things as basic as changing the timeout time for the screen turning off.

Alongside that, I set the alarm to wake me up in the morning, and it just flat didn't work. Didn't go off at all. The settings were right but it didn't go off. Annoying.

Then I downloaded WhatsApp, and tried to use it with my phone on silent. But, when WhatsApp notifications arrived they still made a noise.

I could go on more about irritations of Windows 10 Mobile, it just doesn't seem to be finished. It feels like beta software.


Another slight annoyance with the device is that it is a fingerprint magnet (I believe the white version wouldn't be so much though).

After everything is said and done, even after one or two days I'm longing for my iPhone 6S Plus again. And I will definitely go back to it, feeling ultra disappointment that Microsoft STILL has not got their act together.

Despite this, if you're in the market for a cheap phone that does the basics just fine, then this wouldn't be a bad device to go for, but comparing it to the 640XL of my friend's, I would suggest you go for that at the moment, because Windows 10 Mobile just isn't ready yet.


UPDATE:
Several other reviews suggested this device has all day battery life. I can confirm that for me this hasn't been the case. With intermittent use such as Facebook, Twitter and a few other apps, the battery was down to 5% before 6pm. Whereas my iPhone which had not been charged since the day before was still at 12%.

Edge of Tomorrow - Movie Review

Let's keep this review short and to the point.

Went to see this last night with expectations of something in between Groundhog Day and Starship Troopers (which isn't a bad expectation).
I figured there would be a lot of regurgitated plot lines from ''history repeated" style movies. However, it turns out the plot line was quite unique overall.

The action scenes were very intense and felt like you were actually there in the world of Mr Tom Cruise. There was little to no corny cheesiness of any form of relationship between Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise's characters.
It was complex enough to be plausible in terms of the time travel related aspects, but not too complex that one would need to waste time trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
The cast was well chosen, with a few dodgy British over-exagerrated accents thrown in, but nothing that distracted from the scenes.

Overall, this was a thoroughly enjoyable action-fest with a well constructed storyline, with a little bit of humor thrown in along the way.

I'd recommend you to go see this one.

I give it an 8 out of 10.