After Life

Feb 1, 1988 — Charles Laughton’s classic has the feel and the force of an American folk fable; yet, it also mixes rural humor with gothic humor, biblical quotation and Freudian symbolism, and everyday realities with a near-mythic confrontation between the forces of good...

Jan 11, 1988 — Alfred Hitchcock committed a shocking murder in Sabotage (1936). Here, in one of the director’s darkest works, a child unknowingly carrying a bomb is blown to pieces in the streets of London. The death of Stevie is a deliberate attempt...

Dec 6, 1987 — Mike Nichols’s treatment of a young man’s initiation into the mysteries of sex at the hands of an older married woman has become a model for this common fantasy.

Oct 12, 1987 — Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling Cinemascope epic is set squarely within the traditions of the Japanese film genre known as the “Chambara.”

Nov 10, 1986 — Max Ophuls’s masterpiece is a transformation of a conventional subject into an avant-garde adventure, and a spectacular stylistic breakthrough in the utilization of wide screen and color.

Dec 9, 1985 — Movie thrillers may come and go, but after half a century, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps still reigns supreme. And not only for the sheer, breathless excitement of the story; the seamless construction; the chilling, beautifully realized atmosphere; and the...

Dec 3, 1984 — Since the dawn of the sound era, an estimated 25,000 feature-length films have been produced—and that’s in the English language alone. When, in the early 1960s, an international group of film critics were polled as to their “number-one film of...

Apr 29, 2024 — From After Hours to Mikey and Nicky to Collateral, movies centered on the twists and turns of a single night give filmmakers the chance to boldly experiment with cinematic time and space.

Jan 24, 2025 — We’re sampling new issues of Notebook, Senses of Cinema, and 032c and reading about Eisenstein and Charlotte Zwerin.

Oct 15, 2026 — As Once Upon a Time in Harlem begins its theatrical run, two series celebrate the filmmaker’s centennial.