Sidney Lumet, a director for all

In theaters Friday: Rio, Scream 4

New on DVD/Blu-ray: Country Strong, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Director Sidney Lumet died Saturday at age 86 at his home in New York City, the beloved setting for most of his critically acclaimed films.

“While the goal of all movies is to entertain,” the director who blasted into Hollywood with his remarkable debut 12 Angry Men once said, “the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and gets the mental juices flowing.”

Social issues and deliberations over right-and-wrong and the role of justice in society ran like a thread through much of Lumet’s work. He led a fascinating life on screen and off. His ex-wife was heiress Gloria Vanderbilt and mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. After their divorce in the 1960s, he married singer Lena Horne’s daughter Gail Buckley at a time when mixed race couples were still an ugly taboo. Their daughter, Jenny Lumet, is an actress who also wrote the screenplay for the excellent Rachel Getting Married in 2008.

Perhaps best known for the infinitely-quotable satire of mass media and television news Network, Lumet’s iconic film nabbed four Oscars and stands as a towering achievement in both comedy and drama while it proved prophetic as 24-hour news channels arose just a few years after the 1976 film’s release and quickly blurred the lines between hard news, opinion and entertainment forever. It is a testament to the power of Lumet’s vision that Network is a more important film today, 35 years later, than it was when it was filmed.

As a director, Lumet was a master filmmaker, but also a chameleon. In this way, his closest descendant just might be Steven Soderbergh, a similarly shape-shifting director. Take almost any genre Lumet’s contemporaries excelled in, and Lumet could do them equally well. Want a large-scale ensemble period drama like Robert Altman? Watch Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express. Want a street-wise crime thriller like Martin Scorsese? Watch Lumet’s Serpico. Want a witty dark comedy like Woody Allen? Watch Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. All three of these titles came in the span of just two years in the mid-1970s. Then there’s his tense Cold War catastrophe film Fail-Safe, his European-style art film The Appointment, his stylish Sean Connery-starring heist thriller The Anderson Tapes, his Paul Newman-led courtroom drama The Verdict, and his final film, 2007’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which could give any of the Coen Brother’s downward spiral hijinks capers a run for their existential crisis money—just to name a few.

Throughout his career, Lumet was an artist at play, and that is most often the best kind of filmmaker, especially when it is abundantly obvious his whole heart was in every picture. A jack of all trades and a master of most. What’s the harm in trying new things? With Lumet’s talent, no harm at all.