Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

betty dalton Paul wants to go home at night. But he gets stuck in trouble. Ever increasing trouble. That's the story.The mood of "After Hours" is one of a lighthearted tragicomedy. Martin Scorseses "After Hours" is a little gem. Quite unigue. Very loveable. It is one of my favorite small Scorsese pictures which I must have watched over 10 times now. I watch it whenever I feel in a rut and want some comic relief. This movie is all about having fun with the little misfortunes of another person. In this case the character Paul who just wants to get home, but all sorts of disasters keep raining down on him, so he just isnt able to go home. Disasters of the personal encounter type: Paul keeps meeting people who get him into further trouble every step of the way.The story isnt very realistic, because how difficult can it be to just get home? But if you dont analyse it too rationally, then "After Hours" is hilarious at moments and astonishingly surprising. Great chararcters, witty acting. Lovely soundtrack. And just a bizarre, unique and funny plot. Highly recommended. Watch this flick in the wee small hours after midnight if you can. It hightens the feeling that you are all alone and everything can go wrong if you get into trouble and you dont have help. And that is exactly what the character Paul is facing in "After Hours". Will he get home? I wont tell, but it is a lot of fun seeing Paul trying just to get home. I would like to call it a "supense comedy", because there is definitely something very suspensefull inside this tragic comedy. Discover this gem, give it time, because it is slow paced but you will be rewarded...

a_chinn I was 13-years old when this film came out and for whatever reason, it absolutely clicked with me and I became kind of obsessed with it. It was around this time that I started to notice film directors and the visual flair Martin Scorsese brought to this picture dazzled me, as did the offbeat story. Taking place within the space of one evening in Soho, Griffin Dunne calls up a woman, Rosanna Arquette, for a date who he just met at a diner. From there his evening becomes a series of strange interactions with the color, offbeat, and downright strange denizens of NYC at night. Dunne is the identifiable "normal" everyman character who just wants to go on a date but instead finds his money flying out a cab window, buying weirdo pop art from Linda Fiorentino, befriending a 1950s refugee, Teri Garr, awkwardly finding himself helping Arquette's ex-boyfriend, John Heard, and that's just the beginning. From there it just gets weirder as he runs into other colorful characters played by Cheech & Chong, Catherine O'Hara, Verna Bloom, Will Patton, Victor Argo, and the great Dick Miller. Scorcese's "comedy" nearly becomes a horror film in the mold of "Repulsion" or the "Tenant" with Griffin Dunne's evening turning into something of a surreal comic nightmare. "After Hours" was part of the cycle of "Yuppie Nightmare" films, which included the likes of "Into the Night," "Something Wild," or even "Blue Velvet," a somewhat forgotten sub-genre. Kudos also go to Howard Shore for his fine score and to Michael Ballhaus to his dizzying photography. Overall, this is Scorsese's most "1980s" of films and I think one of his most underrated, very much worthy of it's cult status.

sharky_55 Has Paul Hackett ever stayed up this late before the fateful night in After Hours? My guess is no. He's a middle-class office worker who has little to attract or like about him; even a lowly temp-worker waffles on about his dreams of giving the unknown intellectuals of New York a space for their voices to be heard, and Paul is drifting out of the conversation, focusing on little inane details in the background and lazily lambasting his own lack of passion. But even he isn't dumb enough to turn down an opportunity with Marcy after a spontaneous meet cute in a cafe. The later he stays out, the more out of his element he becomes, and strange, nightime forces begin to morph his encounters. Ballhaus' cinematography seems to blow everything out of proportion, much like Paul does. The first instance of bad luck is the swept away twenty dollar note out the taxi window, captured in this poetic shot as if it was a leaf blowing in the wind. It then turns up again later in the film, taunting Paul on the chaotic, mindless logic that seems to rule the night. In the diner too, as he tries to recover from a slight mishap in wooing Marcy (after zoom-ins on winks that seem to say that everything is moving along nicely), the camera again magnifies every tiny bit of paranoia that drifts into his mind as he witnesses the blatant flirting with the owner and quickly lets go of her hand in closeup. And then as the night goes on and each obstacle stacks on one after the other, Paul becomes desperate at any kind of escape, and the camera frantically moves towards the telephone that will get him back home, and later practically pounces upon Gail's phone. Much of the humour of After Hours is from the fact that these incidents of bad luck keep hurtling themselves at Paul, unrelenting and without reasonable cause. Minion has embedded his script with an awareness of the usual romantic or erotic conventions. He at first tries to woo the artistic and free-spirited Kiki; it seems the opportunity basically falls into his lap as she requests a massage, already half-naked. He assumes that sensual position behind her, and just as he is past whispering and about to make her move...she starts snoring. Later the same mood is ruined; as he and Marcy return from the diner, he pulls her back to him and leans in for the romantic kiss (a move that has been perfected over decades of romantic movies) until she starts sobbing. And then she is on and off - lighting a candle and hungrily kissing him, and then going into vivid detail about a traumatic rape that would sour any sexual encounter. A simple quest for sex has turned into something unbelievably convoluted and unexplainable. Nothing seems to go right for Paul. As he is continually rejected he glances over to the next apartment and the first thing he sees is a copulating couple. Later he does so again and just happens to witness a murder, to which he sardonically remarks he will somehow be caught in the mess and blamed for the act. Toilets overflow, cash registers don't open, fares increase at midnight, and a bouncer, in the vein of Kafka's Before the Law, frustratingly withholds entry to a club. When he returns to find the now dead Marcy, the suicide itself is second fiddle to his unwrapping of her corpse. In a blow of cruel irony, he finds he has blown his chance with someone flawless and beautiful, as her porcelain skin reveals no blemishes. The forces and creatures of witching hour mock him at every turn - their dialogue cackles and reminds him of each misfortune, each turn of bad luck and missed opportunity. He can do nothing but submit to the surreality of the night. In After Hours, a character says he will be back in two minutes, and returns a little more than an hour later.

ronin_wendigo After Hours is the kind of movie that inspired lots of filmmakers but ultimately does not work by itself as a work of art.The film tells the story of an average 80s worker that finds himself into a bizarre adventure full of absurd and terrifying situations.The problem with the movie is that everything (the plot, the characters...) is so absurd that at the end you stop caring about what may happen next. The fact that the script jokes about thing that are not laughable (rape, suicide...) does not help at all.I understand that this movie's absurd humour and the way it deals with twisted versions of actual 80s fears probably were very innovative in its time, but nowadays its not enough to surprise the average viewer.