Twelve Angry Men (William Friedkin, 1997)

Cast: Courtney B. Vance, Ossie Davis, George C. Scott, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Dorian Harewood, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, Jack Lemmon, Hume Cronyn, Mykelti Williamson, Edward James Olmos, William Petersen, Mary McDonnell. Screenplay: Reginald Rose. Cinematography: Fred Schuler. Production design: Bill Malley. Film editing: Augie Hess. 

William Friedkin's Twelve Angry Men is not so easily dismissed as an unnecessary remake of Sidney Lumet's classic 1957 film, itself a remake of Reginald Rose's 1954 television drama. Forty years of change have taken place, and although such a jury today would almost certainly have women on it, at least Friedkin's version includes four Black men. One of them, strikingly, is the most virulent racist on the panel: a former Nation of Islam follower played by Mykelti Williamson, who delivers a vicious diatribe against Latinos. Which incidentally brings up another anomaly: There are no Latinos on this jury, even though it is impaneled in New York City, which certainly has a significant Latino population. Oddly, one of the actors, Edward James Olmos, is Latino, but he plays an Eastern European immigrant. The rant of the juror played by Williamson has perhaps even more significance today than it did in 1997, after an election campaign tainted by racist taunts against immigrants: The speech sounds like it might have been delivered at Donald Trump's infamous Madison Square Garden rally. As for the film itself, it retains the 1954 movie's power to entertain, if only the pleasure of watching 12 good actors at peak performance (and in George C. Scott's case, a bit over the peak). It also retains the tendency to preachiness, like a dramatized civics lesson, though maybe we need that more than ever.  

Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005)

James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet in Romance & Cigarettes

Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Barbara Sukowa, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris. Screenplay: John Turturro. Cinematography: Tom Stern. Production design: Donna Zakowska. Film editing: Ray Hubley. 

Romance & Cigarettes is ... well, certainly unique. It's a marital/family drama with songs and dances, a sort of dramusical with an all-star cast of mostly non-singers. It has passionate advocates and a good number who dislike it. It was spottily released, first at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, then in the UK and Europe, but not in the United States until 2007, partly owing to disagreements among the various production companies, but also to the difficulty of marketing such an oddball movie. I happen to like it a lot, mostly because of the enthusiastic professionalism of its actors, who were called on to do things they don't usually do. James Gandolfini plays a construction worker named (no kidding) Nick Murder, married to Kitty (Susan Sarandon) but with a mistress named Tula (Kate Winslet). Nick and Kitty have three daughters: Baby (Mandy Moore), Constance (Mary-Louise Parker), and Rosebud (Aida Turturro), who serve as a kind of Greek chorus to the breakup that occurs when Kitty discovers a seriously raunchy love note (there's a lot of raunch in the movie) Nick has written to Tula. Things get heated, kicked off by a production number set to Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love," that features garbage men dancing in the streets of Queens. And it doesn't let up from there, as actors lipsynch or sing along with singers like Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Ute Lemper, Elvis Presley, and more. They also smoke a lot of cigarettes, and this half of the film's title precipitates the film's conclusion, which is probably its weakest part, as if writer-director John Turturro couldn't find another way to resolve the plot he has begun. Still, I welcome any movie that gathers a company as variously talented as Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, and Eddie Izzard to support its superb leads. I have to single out Winslet in particular for giving another performance that demonstrates what a chameleon she is. 

The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2001)

Katherine Borowitz in The Man Who Wasn't There

Ed Crane: Billy Bob Thornton
Doris Crane: Frances McDormand
Frank: Michael Badalucco
Big Dave Brewster: James Gandolfini
Ann Nirdlinger Brewster: Katherine Borowitz
Creighton Tolliver: Jon Polito
Freddy Riedenschneider: Tony Shalhoub
Birdy Abundas: Scarlett Johansson
Walter Abundas: Richard Jenkins

Directors: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Production design: Dennis Gassner
Music: Carter Burwell

The Man Who Wasn't There is a bit like a Twilight Zone episode written by James M. Cain. A barber works in a shop owned by his wife's brother. She has been unfaithful to him with her boss, so when a get-rich scheme is proposed to him, the barber tries to blackmail his wife's lover. Nothing goes quite right, however, and after calamity succeeds calamity, the barber is presented with what appears to be a solution to his problems. It comes, however, from a UFO that hovers overhead, and he rejects it. Perhaps only Joel and Ethan Coen could have accomplished this fusion of film noir and sci-fi with quite the success they achieve, thanks largely to a superb cast, the extraordinary black-and-white cinematography of Roger Deakins, and a score by Carter Burwell that blends unobtrusively with some melancholy-meditative excerpts from Beethoven's piano sonatas.

Watched on Starz Encore