The Gloucester Guildhall is a great place to watch your favourite films combining the latest art-house releases, classic films and world cinema alongside the very best of the blockbuster bunch.

They are also home to the Gloucester Film Society who welcome all those who have an interest in good cinema from a range of types, countires of origin and periods; from the classics to the unusual and from recent titles you may have missed.

Whats on at the Gloucester Guildhall in November 2008...

CINEMA

As in Meadows’ previous film This Is England, Thomas Turgoose is outstanding as a cheeky working-class Northerner in a dark comedy. Teenage orphan Tomo takes the train to London from Nottingham, where he has grown up in care. Despite his streetwise manner, as soon as he arrives at King’s Cross he gets mugged and beaten. By chance he meets Marek, a shy Polish boy who spends his days wandering around taking pictures while his dad works on the construction of St. Pancras station. The two become friends and together roam the area behind the station known as Somers Town, a rundown warren of social housing and decaying industrial wasteland.They find some work, chat up a pretty French waitress and get drunk together. Salty-tongued humour and excellent semi-improvised performances make this mostly-monochrome celebration of cross-cultural relationships a heartwarming treat with edge. More info...

The Pope´s impending visit to a small Uruguayan town in 1988 stimulates a flurry of activity among the poorest residents, who hope to strike it rich by catering to the needs of the 50,000 expected pilgrims. While his neighbours are furiously making chorizos, blowing up balloons, building barbecues and buying up sugar for candy floss, small time smuggler Beto thinks bigger and decides to build a paying toilet. Painfully he assembles the materials, but as his wife and daughter prepare to welcome the expected guests fate threatens to send everything down the pan. Shot in a grainy, realist style, this delightful film shows hard lives lived with dry humour. More info...

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (12A)

Georgia Nicolson is fourteen, not blonde, and lives with her nosey mum, her Reliant Robin-driving dad and annoying kid sister. Through her diary entries we share her pain as - supported only by the love of her cat Angus and her girlfriends - she overcomes the trauma of being a teenager and goes in search of a gorgeous boyfriend. When handsome Robbie arrives at school she devises a plan to divert him from her thong-wearing rival Lindsay but, as her fifteenth birthday party looms, finds snogging lessons and stalking are a rocky path to romance.
Based on the best-selling books by Louise Rennison, director Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) gives us a funny and very British take on the American high school movie. More info...

Jules et Jim (PG)

In 1912 young carefree bohemian writers Jules, an Austrian, and Jim, a Frenchman, are best friends. Even when they both fall in love with the flighty Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) and she marries Jules, their bond is unshaken over 30 years. Fighting on opposite sides during the First World War, their chief anxiety is that they might kill one another on the battlefield. Years pass, Jim visits Jules and Catherine in Germany and finds that although they now have a daughter, their marriage is disintegrating. When Catherine sets her sights on Jim, Jules has an agonising favour to ask. This painfully moving story about uncompromising friendship and uncontrollable love - held to be Truffaut’s best film – has just been re-released in a new print. More info...

Business is bad at the Honeydripper Lounge, Alabama in 1950. No one wants to hear the resident blues singer; they’d rather hang out at the juke joint up the road. Desperate to win them back, owner Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover) books famous Bluesman Guitar Sam for a Saturday night gig despite the misgivings of his increasingly God-fearing wife Delilah. In the meantime they shelter a young man with a guitar case who has drifted into town, but can’t prevent his being picked up for vagrancy. As the bailiffs close in, everything hinges on Guitar Sam’s arrival but there’s no sign of him at the station; can they find a substitute in a hurry? Sayles’ tale catches the moment when the guitar went electric and took centre stage, featuring R&B, jazz, blues, gospel and country as they morph into the excitement of rock n’roll. More info...

Mamma Mia! (PG)

This stylish, starry screen adaptation of the hit ABBA musical has been one of the big summer hits at the UK box office.
The story unfolds through song on a Greek island as Donna (Meryl Streep), ex-hippie owner of a faded taverna, is about to see her daughter Sophie get married. When Sophie discovers a diary suggesting that her father could be one of three men she invites them all (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard) to the wedding in the hope that the right one will give her away. Mum invites her best mate (Julie Walters) for moral support and we’re set for 24 hours of musical chaos, revelation and reconciliation before anyone can say ‘I do I do I do I do I do’. More info...

Factory worker François (Jean Gabin) is a cornered man. He’s shot someone dead in his garret flat atop a multi-storey tenement, and the police are closing in fast although by law they can’t burst in until daybreak. As he stoically awaits his fate, François ponders the circumstances which have led to his grim situation. In flashbacks we see his romantic entanglements with youthful, teddybear-hugging shopgirl Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and jaded woman-of-the-world Clara (Arletty), both of them - in some way - involved with cruel, cynical entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry) whom he has just killed. Scripted by Jacques Prevert (Les Enfants du Paradis), the film is the most celebrated example of the doomy poetic realism which flourished in 30s France, and Gabin, France's biggest star at that time, gives a remarkable performance as an honest man duped into committing a crime of passion. More info...

Cynical intellectual writer Sidney (Simon Pegg), despises the vacuous world of celebrity. Through the pages of his magazine, Post Modern Review, he pokes fun at its media-obsessed stars and he shows his contempt by disrupting a post-BAFTA party with a pig. This stunt so amuses media boss Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges) that he offers Sidney a job with his conservative New York-based Sharps magazine. Once out of his comfort zone in the Big Apple and surrounded by A - Listers Sidney is forced to reconsider his deeply-held beliefs and try to fit in. More info...

Great film entertainment at the Gloucester Guildhall this month.

• Event: Cinema at he Gloucester Guildhall
• Date: Throughout October 2008
• Where: Gloucester Guildhall, 23 Eastgate Street, Gloucester GL1 1NS

• Contact phone : Gloucester Guildhall Box Office: 01452 503050
• Also see : Gloucester Guildhall website
• Also see : Gloucester Guildhall Cinema
• Also see : Gloucester Guildhall Fact File