Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson found #1, the horror spoof Scary Movie shouty and exhausting, emerging despairing for humanity. The brief trailer, however, is quite funny. #13 Savage House feels like a Jacobean tragedy but is an original, supposedly a satire on our own times. Starring Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy, it's supposedly a black comedy but the tone left James depressed. It is well made, with excellent production values, but while grotesque, it is not funny. However, he does recommend Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix. Starring Sally Fields, who is on excellent form in her 80th year, it is a funny, touching movie set in an aquarium, with Alfred Molina voicing a wise octopus. Set in a timeless backwater full of eccentrics it has real heart and is frequently very funny.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson is rather mystified by the success of #1 Backrooms, with Chewitel Ejiofor. A horror film based on a web series, it baffled James, unaware of its precedents but people are loving it. James was much more taken with #9 Power Ballad with Paul Rudd. Written and directed by John Carney, it's even better than his earlier films such as Once and Sing Street. Peopled with interesting characters and with witty dialogue and great music, it reduced James to tears. Ladies First, on Netflix, is an English-language version of their first French-language film. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike, it's about a womanising liar who wakes up in a parallel universe which is a matriarchy. With echoes of Mel Gibson's What Women Want, it's witty and well acted but is more farcical fantasy than satire.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
After watching #1 Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, James Cameron-Wilson says he's exhausted by all these fantasy franchises. The effects are impressive but the plot seems redundant and he was extremely bored. Not so with #8 Finding Emily, the best romcom he has seen in quite some time. Produced by the team behind Love Actually and Bridget Jones, it's about a student trying to find a girl he clicked with, only for the search to go badly awry. Humming with great Curtis-esque lines, it has an engaging freshness and feels very real. After a brief mention of Hen, in which a hen observes Greek life, James discusses The Wizard of the Kremlin, starring Paul Dano and Alicia Vikander, about a filmmaker who becomes an adviser to Putin. On various platforms, it has an air of the Europudding.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson urges us to see #7 The Christophers, Steven Soderbergh's virtual two-hander with Ian McKellan and Michaela Coel. About the children of a famous painter trying to get a forger to finish some of their father's canvasses, it benefits from superb acting and a magnificently witty script. Although a theatrical experience, it is a thing of beguiling beauty and is very funny. At #64 is Life Hack, another movie in which computer screens are depicted on the big screen. But this tale of an attempted heist by hackers set in the world of bitcoin carves out its own genre and deserves to be caught in cinemas. James continues his exploration of East German DEFA films with the 1966 banned movie Trace of Stones. Depicting life in the GDR in the 1960s, it seems uncontroversial now, though hardly flattering, and its home video premiere is accompanied by three documentaries.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson finds #3 The Sheep Detectives a bit of a curate's egg. An anthropomorphic fantasy, families will take the astonishingly animated sheep to their hearts in a plot worth of Agatha Christie but the acting is annoyingly hammy. Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard & Soft is a concert film directed by James Cameron. Often hard to hear the lyrics, it is perhaps one for her fans. Out on Blu-Ray is Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love. Robert Pattinson is sidelined by Jennifer Lawrence's impressive performance as a depressive mother becoming increasingly irrational. An important film which juggles realism with the nightmarish, it is almost a character-based horror film.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says that #1 The Devil Wears Prada 2 has taken 85% of the first film's total in just 3 days. Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway have reunited, along with much of the behind-the-camera talent. It's a formulaic and superficial pleasure but has plenty of laughs. James thinks Primavera, about the composer Vivaldi, is one of the best films of the year: it is showing in select Picturehouse and Curzon hardtops. He feels everyone should watch Netflix's documentary The Plastic Detox, which he says has changed his life. It's full of good humour, despite its message about the toxic chemicals in plastics which alter our hormones. It's horrifying but educational and actually made a massive difference to six formerly childless couples who were the detox guinea pigs. He advises everybody to give a wide berth to the awful Greenland 2: Migration, an apocalyptic thriller with Gerard Butler.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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James Cameron-Wilson says that Michael's £11.5m opening was 68% of the weekend take. It's the biggest opening for a musical biopic but, under Antoine Fuqua's direction, it's a hagiography telling only half of the Michael Jackson story. With his nephew in the starring role and six producers having the surname Jackson, perhaps that's not surprising. Overly affectionate, it doesn't feel real but that won't deter his fans. On Netflix, the survival thriller Apex stars Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton. It gripped James from the off. The less you know about the plot, the better. It delivers in spades as a thriller but it does go to some very dark places. Watch it if you dare. As for Roommates, also on Netflix, this is a crude college comedy which is offensive mechanical dross. The longer it went on, the more depressed James became.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
Not a great week. James Cameron-Wilson found Lee Cronin’s 'The Mummy', #4, an OTT, grotesque blend of Egyptian frolics and Exorcist-like demonic possession, genuinely unpleasant. Not much better was the Kander & Ebb musical 'Kiss of the Spider Woman', #51, a downer set in a prison cell with Jennifer Lopez as the Spider Woman, at least in the fanciful dreams of Luis, an imprisoned homosexual in 1983 Argentina. On Netflix there wasn’t much relief, with 'Thrash', a disaster pic set during a category 5 hurricane which unleashes sharks into a small South Carolina community: implausible, very silly and unintentionally mirthful.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson,Chad Kennerk
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson found the romcom #7 You, Me & Tuscany implausible, clichéd and derivative dross. However, he adored #9 California Schemin', a true story directed by James McAvoy about a pair of Scottish wannabe rappers who pretend to be American to get noticed. Told with cinematic verve and with great performances, it's an extraordinary story which reminded him of Trainspotting. James found Keanu Reeves in Outcome, on Apple TV+, a story about a movie star worried about a bizarre video from his past, all rather too familiar and underwhelming. Directed and co-written by Jonah Hill, it's also terribly crude. He adored The President's Cake, an Iraqi film, again based on true events, made with non-actors. Heartbreaking and compelling, it's a small masterpiece, available on BFI Player and Amazon Prime.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says box office has jumped 113% with the release of Super Mario Galaxy Movie but he opted to go to #3 The Drama, with Robert Pattinson and Zendaya. It's a comedy of manners which is grown up, thought-provoking and enormously funny in a dark way, leading to an unusual post-movie discussion. James also caught #123 Two Women, a French-Canadian comedy of quiet suburban desperation. It's odd, amusing and unpredictable and will be appearing in various places over the coming months. He recommends steering clear of the Disney+ film online Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, with Vince Vaughn playing himself twice in a dire shambles of a movie.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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