After Hours
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.94 You Save: $3.03 (51%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.24 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of After Hours
Movie Review: classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Martan Scorcesse made After Hours when he was being bullied by fundimentalist goons, trying to get Last Temptation of Christ produced. Can't bring a project off, find another project. It is what the best artists do.
And this film is the opposite of Last Temptation: small, indie tinged and wickedly funny. A nice, average updown New Yorker goes down to Soho to try and get a little action.
When your money goes out the window on the cab ride downtown, it is probably time to go back uptown, have a beer and go to sleep. Our hero does not realize this, and very very few of us would.
And when your first date starts to cry and her roomate goes topless in front of you, yeah, you get the hint. By then, the subway fare goes up and you realize you are in deep trouble.
I won't reveal more but one certianty: we have all days when we should have just stayed in bed with Law and Order and coco. But we troup on and random microdisasters just seem to pop from our normal routine, but by this time, it is too late to go home.
Beyond the great editing and production values and humor which could only be Martin, here is the great part. After the loons of Taxi Driver and King Of Comady, After Hours is Scorcesse dealing with a common guy, having a really, really bad night. Over the top, sure, but something we can all connect with. We have probably all had a day like this, on a smaller scale, in the past few weeks.
The sequence of events is far fetched but with After Hours, that is the point. It makes the film funnier, and the events more immediate.
And I'll tell you, after some of the days I have had, I beleive every frame is entirely plausable.
Movie Review: Scorcese at His Comic Best!
Summary: 5 Stars
Scorsese At His Comic Best
After Hours is one of Scorcese's underrated comedies. One of the first big films in the 80's to compress its entire story as an occurrence a brief, compressed period of time, that being a single - seemingly endless - night in the life of a dreary, over-ordinary word processor. In many regards Scorcese's timing could not be more perfect, coming smack in the middle of the bloated 80's. We meet Paul who seems to be an allegory for entire decade; a boring, intelligent, word processor going nowhere. He meets Marcy and in a matter of hours the seemingly simple quest of "getting home" turns into an eternal nightmare; finally when mistakenly identified as a gay burglar he is chased down by an angry neighborhood mob (the chase also involves a slow-moving Mr. Softee Ice Cream truck). The "after hours" scene at what was earlier the Berlin Club where Paul pulls himself together to dance with a patron to Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" is one of cinema's great tragicomic moments.
Martin assembled an extraordinarily starry cast some of whom appear in roles that last but a moment, and all seem to relish their roles making each a complete and vital character.
I think what makes this movie so uniquely universal is how many of us have had nights of similar demented dimensions. It's a Wizard of Oz film for the 80's but without any of the help of the fellow Yellow Brick Road gang.
Give me a big helping of After Hours any day over Gangs of New York!
Movie Review: "Surrender Dorothy"
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the most frenetic, hilariously funny, sick movies I've ever seen. A working class schmuck meets a girl, follows her, gets creeped out by her, runs as far away from her as he can, meets another girl, gets weirded out by her, runs the other way, meets another girl, well you get the picture. And of course he's lost his money out the taxi window. This must be the longest night of his life. Each time he thinks he's about to catch a break and get back home before daylight to catch some winks before another grinding day at the office something and/or someone undermines him. There's also an odd thread of burn scars and burning throughout that adds to the disequilibrium. The humor is twisted but a relief; you almost feel bad for laughing but can't help yourself. I loved the so, so young performances by John Heard, Rosanna Arquette, Cheech Marin and especially Teri Garr. There's even a cameo of a young Scorsese! The way Scorsese dressed and filmed Arquette's character seemed like a parody of Hitchcock's Grace Kelly character in Rear Window with the added creep factor of how tweaked Arquett's Marcie was. For instance at 2 something in the morning, at a deserted dinner she tells the main protagonist, played incredibly well by Griffin Dunne, how her estranged husband was fixated on "The Wizard of Oz" to the point he'd call out `surrender Dorothy' during intimate moments. I have no idea what Scorsese was trying to say with "After Hours" but it sure was fun to watch.
Movie Review: We all are one step from The Truly Surreal....
Summary: 5 Stars
....Scorsese shows us how in this great movie. 'Course, mebbe it helps that most of us are no where nears Soho after 10 pm., but trust me, the later it gets in many places after dark, the stranger it gets. What makes this film work is that Griffin Dunne's face is so average guy and so 'deer caught in the headlights'-like that we increasingly identify with him as things get increasingly bizarre. But also it's funny if you've ever been in a similar situation. I have and I am glad I survived it. That entire scenario with Rosanna Arquette and a punked out Linda Fiorentino would have a person like me going 'H-Okay, where's David Lynch and his crew?' And it steadily gets creepier. John Heard offers Dunne the keys to his pad as the bar Heard works at seem to be converting into a dark omnisexual kinda pickup joint, and Teri Garr and the go-go boots and the Monkees-mania gets too unreal. (One would have some thought to having a romp with her--she ain't ugly. But she is space cadet-y. And I'm sure after the Arquette/Fiorentino scenario, Griffin just didn't wanna go there...do you blame him?) Cheech and Chong's presence makes for a intensifying boosterrific 3 AM nightmare. Then there's the whole goings-on with that cursed 20 dollar bill. Overall, Griffin should have started walking home, and taken a chance with the muggers. To all normal folks reading this in the comfort of their homes, never venture out anywhere after 12 AM. That's when the crazies roam.Movie Review: Best Dark Comedy Ever
Summary: 5 Stars
What a perfect movie. I can't believe they haven't released this on DVD yet. One of Scorsese's best movies, and that's saying a lot. Griffin Dunne is brilliant in this. So rich in detail and the cinematography is excellent. So many great shots... His only $20 flying out the window of the cab. The keys being thrown from the roof. And I LOVE the look on his face when he meets Horst. You can only see one wide eye over Horst's shoulder as Paul tries to assess his safety and the weird bondage scene he has just walked in on, while Horst makes him apologize for being rude. I've never seen so much expression out of just a quarter of someone's face. As I said, this is a perfect movie from start to finish. Every minute of it. I loved this movie so much when I first saw it, that my first fake ID in high school carried the name Paul Hackett. Hehe. Plus, it's hard not to identify with Paul for a lot of us. He doesn't lead the most exciting existence, and ALL HE WANTS TO DO is meet up with this beautiful woman that seems interested in him (to his amazement), only to have her turn out to be a total freak (and worse) and have EVERYTHING go wrong. He is SO out of his element the entire movie. So funny and surreal. A true masterpiece.