MikePadgett.com

• Director: Walter Salles
• Brazil, 2001
• 

Sandwiched between the superb Central Station and the even better Motorcycle Diaries, Salles’ period adaptation of an Albanian novel makes memorable cinema out of the simplest of storylines.

Walter Carvalho’s cinematography expresses aridity, drudgery and wilderness in a style reminiscent of Sergio Leone’s westerns, as Tonho (played sensitively by Rodrigo Santoro) struggles to break out of the suffocating existence imposed on his family by a long-running blood feud.

In common with his great films to date, Behind the Sun is another lyrical example of the director’s attempts to breathe humanity into the most inhuman of environments and it succeeds with surprising economy.

• Director: Martin Scorsese
• United States, 2002
• 

Gangs Of New York follows the fortunes of Amsterdam Vallon, orphaned as a young boy by the mercurial leader of a rival gang in 19th century lower Manhattan.

The film marks the return of Leonardo DiCaprio who had given a string of pin-up roles the slip and DiCaprio’s protagonist Amsterdam Vallon is backed by a fine cast of Irish players.

Daniel Day-Lewis was persuaded by Martin Scorsese to quit his apprenticeship as a Florentine cobbler - a job he’d been doing since his self-imposed retirement from acting five years previous - and join the cast of Gangs. His picaresque performance as the formidable object of Vallon’s vengeance dominates Scorsese’s most successful period drama to date.