12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957). Lumet’s feature debut is a master class in shot construction. Contained almost entirely within a tight jury room as twelve men engage in deliberations over a murder case that grow increasingly heated, Lumet manages to make the visuals dynamic without resorting to trick shots. Instead, the film is filled with expertly staged and blocked sequences. The camera slyly follows a character as he moves about the room, catching the quiet reactions of everyone else, the facial expressions of those in deep consideration telling as full of a story as the words they share. Henry Fonda plays the juror who first bucks against the snap guilty verdict that is the consensus. He’s strong in the role, though it’s actually one of the least flashy, especially since it plays right into the stolid, noble persona that was cemented for Fonda from the moment his Tom Joad listed off the wide variety of places he intended to be. There’s far more color written into the other eleven, especially the fiery soul played by Lee J. Cobb. Oddly, Cobb’s performance, riveting as it is, lives for me in the engulfing shadow of the perfect casting that would follow fifty years later. And I haven’t even seen that version.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Christian Mungiu, 2007). Utterly extraordinary in its stark, fearless commitment to its sensitive subject. In nineteen-eighties Romania, a university student helps her roommate secure an illegal abortion. With a deep, questing understanding of human nature and the shakiness of those who move carefully, fearfully through an oppressive society, 4 Months proceeds without a false move. Perhaps most impressively, Mungiu manages an unblinking film of brutal honesty that never veers into exploitation. There are harsh moments, but they’re never pushed on the audience. They are simply presented. That is enough, and it is powerful. Anamaria Marinca is marvelous in the lead role, showing the ways that frustration mix with fear, and hinting that much of what she does is out of a sense of damaged duty, fueled by the gloomy knowledge the she may someday require the same sort of assistance.

Kongo (William J. Cowen, 1932). Pure batshit craziness committed forcefully to film. Walter Huston plays a wheelchair-bound despot in the middle of the jungle, manipulating the natives into controlled docility by showing them magic tricks while hatching a plan to murder the grown daughter of his hated rival. Based on a stage play, the film primarily takes place in one sweaty hut with razorwire dialogue rebounding around the soundstage walls as perfect flavoring to the twisty, twisted plot. Despite it’s place in the lightest of light rotation on TCM, it’ll never be mistaken for a classic, but it’s definitely fun to watch, if only to imagine the aghast gapes some of the more outlandish costumes must have drawn when the extras strolled across the MGM backlot.

Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006). This film about two friends taking a leisurely trip into the Oregon wilderness is the polar opposite of “rip-roaring.” Writer-director Reichardt has crafted something so slow, tender and thoughtful that it’s tempting to put it on every night at bedtime and let it soothe you to sleep. That tone works for the film, suiting the delicate interplay of the characters. There’s a somberness to their time together, a sense of people diverging and trying to make something of the very last time that their personal paths are even within sight of each other. Reichardt’s style goes beyond naturalistic to something only marginally removed from lobbing an actively filming camera into any random passerby’s car and assembling a movie from the resulting footage. It can be trying in its resolute aversion to any sort of narrative drive, but there are definitely rewards in its ruminative aimlessness.

2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, 2007). Writing and directing this film about a couple concluding a European vacation with a visit to her family in Paris, Delpy pulls together some fine scenes that highlight the ways that people helplessly pick at relationships until they run the risk of becoming little more than a problematic combination of habit and hostility. In all, it doesn’t hold together, though. There’s simply not enough of a story or enough grounding of the two lead characters. They too often feel like collections of improvised quirks instead of well-thought-out creations. While there are funny scenes involving the French family’s tendency to flip from warm banter to explosive arguments at the drop of a beret, Delpy also relies on comic scenes that are drawn too broadly. When it comes to the acting, she’s winning as always, but the film would have been improved if she’d cast the male lead better. Adam Goldberg, while able to spin his lines with some sharp cynicism, lacks the subtlety that could have elevated the role and the film.

(Posted simultaneously on “Jelly-Town!”)