Dir: Pierre Salvadori
Released: 13th June 2008

Priceless is a witty romantic comedy.  It sees the young and attractive gold-digger, Irene, ably played by Audrey Tautou, as she hunts for a rich and handsome husband.  Her plans go awry, though, when she unwittingly seduces a penniless barman, Jean, played by Gad Elmaleh.  As the truth emerges, Jean is drawn into Irene’s world and the paths of their lives continue to cross (if not, at first, their stars). 

A well trodden and reasonably predictable plot would, no doubt, be rather sickening had it been made with a high-budget in Hollywood with the obvious stars; however, the sights of the Cote d’Azur, the Continental fashions as well as Elmaleh’s ‘puppy-dog’ eyes, not to mention the romanticism inherent in the French language, make Priceless a charming film. 

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Dir: Jon Poll
Released:  16th May 2008

Charlie Bartlett is a wealthy teenager who has been expelled from every private school he has attended, due to his illegal entrepreneurial activities.  So, he ends up going to the local public high school and again gets himself into trouble.  Charlie becomes a teen therapist, taking sessions in the bathroom and prescribing medication. 

The directorial debut of long time film editor, Jon Poll, is a fine film.  This is a smart comedy which attempts to address some important issues dealing with psychiatric treatment.  The film’s writers are well aware that young teens are increasingly being prescribed strong medication, such as Ritalin, to “help” them through their problems.  Unfortunately, the film struggles when dealing with these serious issues, and is at its best when dealing with Charlie’s comedic antics. 

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Dir: John Sayles
Released: 25th April 2008

Set in Alabama in 1950, the time of the Jim Crow Laws, Honeydripper tells the story of life in the small town of Harmony.

The pace of life in Harmony, as well as of the film, is slow and everyone just ambles along.  Two young boys play with their home-made musical instruments on the porch and in the evening sneak out to hear real music, armed white “cops” supervise the poor black people as they pick cotton in the heat for pitiful wages and a blind man plays his guitar outside the drugstore.

Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover), an aging boogie-woogie piano player, is desperate to save his social club, the ‘Honeydripper’, from financial ruin.  Tyrone also has to deal with growing tensions between his wife and daughter (played by Yaya DaCosta of America’s Next Top Model).  Sonny Blake (Gary Clark, Jr), a handsome young man with dreams of being a famous guitarist drifts into town, looking for somewhere to play his music. So, the action centres on the ‘Honeydripper’ and the attempt to resurrect it. 

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Not a secret for much longer…Galen O’Hanlon investigates the new phenomenon that is Secret Cinema for Pi Film by attending their first event, a screening of Paranoid Park. 

In a bid to spruce up the cinema experience, Secret Cinema takes it firmly away from the mainstream. The location is announced on the morning of the event (an effort to keep it as secret as possible), and, in this case, the designated meeting place (an alley near London Bridge) was sufficiently dingy to make the dingy pub opposite look inviting. It wasn’t a particularly glitzy premiere for the latest in film innovation. But then this was an event for the film connoisseur.

It was definitely more of an experience than the average Odeon or even the edgiest sticky-floored Soho arts screen. To begin with it felt like an uncanny mix of amateur theatre and budget Madam Tussauds: grey uniformed security guards pointed maglites in your face and chased skaters through the set of trestle tables and mood lamps. But as we were lead through into the vaulted under-belly of the railway it began to make more sense. There were posters on the walls and flyers on the floor branded with the ‘Future Shorts’ logo, and the occasional poster for the Cannes winner ‘Paranoid Park’.

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Dir: Mike Leigh
Released: 18th April 2008

After ‘Vera Drake’ (2004), which offered a grim outlook on abortion in the 1950s, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ marks a happy change for director Mike Leigh. Light and optimistic, the film follows cheerful primary-school teacher Poppy (Sally Hawkins) as she bounces through life as a single thirty-something in contemporary London.

Unlike the gritty Vera, trapped in the dingy greys of knitted cardigans in post-war Britain, Poppy breezes across the screen in an array of brightly-coloured clothes and sparkles with all the vibrancy to match.  As Leigh shares radiant snippets of her seemingly ordinary life, it becomes clear that ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’, as its title indicates, just beams with an incredible joie de vivre.

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Dir: Martin Scorsese
Released: 11th April 2008

The premise for Shine a Light is simple: to capture on film two recent concerts by the legendary Rolling Stones mixed with archive footage of interviews with the band members. In the hands of most directors the film would only appeal to the admittedly vast legions of Stones fans. With Martin Scorsese at the helm, however, the resulting two hours is nothing short of breathtaking cinema.

Those expecting a film similar to Scorsese’s excellent Bob Dylan documentary “No Direction Home” may be slightly disappointed, as this film is more like a fan’s loving homage, with the emphasis on capturing the band’s greatness live. This is comfortably achieved by Scorsese, who manages to frame some quite remarkable images: Keith Richards malevolently discards a cigarette mid-solo, the crowd whoops in unison to “Sympathy for the Devil” and Mick Jagger emerges onstage seemingly straight out of a beam of light. Indeed, as the title suggests, light plays a starring role in the proceedings. Rays stream almost biblically through the stained glass façade of New York’s Beacon Theatre, casting an ethereal glow over the band and their instruments.

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