At Five in the Afternoon

Jun 29, 2017 — Dorothy B. Hughes’s 1947 novel In a Lonely Place, “about a World War II flyboy, now a serial rapist and murderer, would have violated just about every commandment in the Production Code,” had Nicholas Ray and screenwriter Andrew Solt stuck...

Nov 25, 2020 — “Yes, life is a dream, but sometimes that dream is a fatal abyss.” Wanda in The White Sheik (1952) I have a vivid memory from the first film-studies class I enrolled in, a class on Italian neorealism, where the weekly...

Nov 22, 2011 — 12 Angry Men (1957), the first feature film directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, is a Hollywood classic that, ironically, helped to define an era of filmmaking grounded in the gritty realism and frenetic energy of urban New York. A...

Aug 17, 2009 — Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece, a mesmerizing study of stasis and containment, time and domestic anxiety. Stretching its title character’s daily household routine in long, stark takes, Akerman’s film simultaneously allows viewers to...

Sep 30, 2022 — We’re reading interviews with Garret Bradley and Don Hertzfeldt and a marvelous account of the making of Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Sep 29, 2021 — Celebrate the spooky month with our collection dedicated to cinema’s most legendary monsters and a series of chilling home-invasion thrillers.

Apr 17, 2019 — Showcasing new work by filmmakers at the forefront of nonfiction and hybrid cinema, this year’s edition also pays tribute to three vital groundbreakers.

Jun 29, 2016 — In this essay, first published in Grand Street in 1994, Dr. Strangelove coscreenwriter Terry Southern offers a lively behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production.

Jan 30, 2025 — The next four days see the spotlights hit Frederick Wiseman, Jerry Schatzberg, Chantal Akerman, and more.

Apr 24, 2024 — This month brings a collection of Chantal Akerman’s writing, analyses of Ozu and Kubrick, and list of the best Hollywood books ever.