Richard Wall on the Movies

“Lew, it was a great movie year – on the periphery.

“In April the German-language film Downfall, vividly portraying the last days of Hitler in the bunker and the destruction of Berlin, was a tour de force, especially Bruno Ganz’s performance as the moustachioed, temperamental tyrant.

“Andrew Niccol, the New Zealand movie director, finally produced a worthy follow-up to his excellent futuristic nightmare Gattaca (1997) in The Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage as the semi-fictional, cynical ‘merchant of death,’ arms-dealer Yuri Orlov (scheduled for DVD release in March).

“Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles trumped his hugely successful début offering about the slums of Rio, City of God (2002) with his film of Africa – a haunting interpretation of John Le Carré’s The Constant Gardener.

“And for documentary, none better than Martin Scorsese’s tribute to the great Bob Dylan in No Direction Home.”

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.