Films for the longest day of the year 🕰️

To welcome the summer solstice, here are some of our favourite films that take place over 24 hours — plus, Cleo Sood chats with friends about the future of film...

Summer Solstice Watchlist ☀️

For the longest day of the year, In The Mood magazine’s team each recommends a film that takes place over 24 hours…

Targets (1968)

Every hour moves slowly, each set piece feeling like mini films of their own: washed out horror actor Byron Orlok’s washed out hotel room, where he gets drunk with a desperate movie director. Bobby Thompson’s blue blue blue home, where he shoots his mother and wife after typing out the time in red ink on a typewriter. The oil storage tank along the freeway, where he continues his killing spree against a hollow windy soundscape that reminded me of Grand Theft Auto.

And of course, Byron’s final press appearance at a drive-in theatre, where everyone comes together and falls apart. Time is life and death is time. Bobby and his guns poise behind the drive-in screen tower as the projectionist loads the projector with film, the screen waiting white and blank—something to shoot at.
—Sennah Yee, Managing Editor

Ponyboi (2024)

Grimy. Sexy. Gripping.

Ponyboi wears its big heart on its tiny little sleeve. Taking place over a Valentine’s Day in New Jersey, the film is a neon-dipped neo-noir epic that somehow makes me think of Lana Del Rey, The Godfather, and Requiem for a Dream all at once.

A must-watch with a good group of friends (mostly gay), lights low, lots of cherry Coke to go around, and maybe a cowboy hat or two.
—cynthia cepeda

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

What’s that famous line? Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop, ditch school, steal a Ferrari, serenade the city, have a nervous breakdown, and look around once in a while, you could miss it? In the John Hughes classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the events of a single day serve as lessons on having a singular life. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Watch it again for the joyride, the titular Bueller’s cinematic charm, and the sunshiny American myth that freedom is just a matter of nerve, not circumstance.
—Cleo Sood, Assistant Editor

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Putting this here partly as a reminder for me to rewatch; and I forgot it takes place over one late-summer/early-fall day in Los Angeles (perhaps why it is so psychologically intense); and if you’re into this kind of thing, it’s ripe for psychoanalytic readings (based loosely on a case study of a real teen delinquent by psychologist Robert M. Lindner); and of course, there’s the uncanny death drive that seeps out into the real world (James Dean died in a car crash before the film came out); and it’s directed by Nicholas Ray (the auteur of lost and angry men); and it’s shot in gorgeous CinemaScope; and that’s enough reasons!
—Gabrielle Marceau, Editor-In-Chief

All of Us Are Dead (2022)

Absolutely emotionally devastating and heart-wrenching (pun intended). And the best damn zombie acting you may ever see.
—Kay Evans-Stocks, Creative Director

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Why are all the robots screenwriters? Is this a slump or an ending? And other fears for the future

Cleo Sood chats with friends and contributors of In The Mood Magazine about the future of film…

As a child, I’d spend the hour-long period in the computer lab Googling 2012 doomsday predictions, forcing my friends to turn away from Y2k computer lab games intended to teach keyboarding skills to discuss instead the possibility of civilization’s collapse.

While I played it cool in front of my school friends, my fear was palpable among cousins who’d taunt me with the topic, who’d take the mouse from my hand and direct the cursor to the headline that brought on a full-blown meltdown with snotty, hiccupy sobs. An hour later, I’d feel foolish for my outburst, and although I sincerely anticipated that the earth would soon split in half, that the sun would spontaneously combust, and that humanity would cease to exist, I was determined to stay composed, like, “whatever Mayan calendar do you mean?” So, when my cousins suggested we use the Costco passes our parents had given us to watch Roland Emmerich’s 2012, I agreed.