Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ism70.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!bbnccv!ism70!steven
From: steven@ism70.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: notes on After Hours
Message-ID: <13100140@ism70.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 12:26:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism70.13100140
Posted: Mon Sep 30 12:26:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 06:33:11 EDT
Lines: 63
Nf-ID: #N:ism70:13100140:000:2926
Nf-From: ism70!steven    Sep 30 12:26:00 1985



AFTER HOURS

Starring Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette and Linda Fiorentino.

Also starring Verna Bloom, Thomas Chong, Teri Garr, John Heard,
Cheech Marin, Catherine O'Hara, Dick Miller and Bronson Pinchot.

Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Joseph Minion. Produced
by Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne and Robert F. Colesberry.

Photographed by Michael Ballhaus. Production Designed by Jeffrey
Townsend. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Music by Howard Shore.

From Warner Bros. Pictures (1985).

New York is to Hollywood as "After Hours" is to "Into the Night."
And it says something about Hollywood, I think, that "After Hours"
is a much better work.

Griffin Dunne plays normal guy Paul Hackett, a word processor
living in New York City. He wasn't asking for much out of life.
All he wanted to do that evening was meet the nice girl (Rosanna
Arquette) that he saw in the coffee shop. So she said, "Come
over, I live in SoHo." So he did. But then he found he couldn't get
home...

That's the setup to this hysterically funny pitch-black comedy.
The joke is that the harder Paul struggles to get out of what
he's gotten himself into, the more the intricate web of
circumstances and coincidences close in around him. Scorsese and
Minion have created a dreamy world in the after hours night of
the artsy SoHo district wherein you with your cable tv lifestyle
are the weird outcast. Kinky Kiki (Linda Fiorentino) and moody
Marcy (Rosanna) are least of Paul's problems after he stumbles
his way out of the aborted date.

Scorsese handles a great cast with perfect aplomb. He uses star
names the way Hitch used to in his audience pictures. If a
character isn't going to be onscreen for a long time, you want to
cast a familiar actress/actor so that the audience can
immediately "know" the person based on their screen persona.
That's how Teri Garr, Cheech and Chong, and Catherine O'Hara get
their work done. Dunne, Arquette and Fiorentino don't strike one
false note (the two ladies are more, ahem, remarkable than I've
ever seen them).  And doesn't Dunne look remarkably like Dudley
Moore when his hair is wet??

Scorsese shows up in the picture in Club Berlin; you see him in a
Russian commisar's coat manning the spotlights from on high.
That's just what he does in this picture: run things full steam,
on high. Michael Ballhaus' camera prowls restlessly. We go from
extreme close-ups quick cutting to a point of view that barely
stops moving the whole flick, and sometimes moves really fast.
The directorial style is incredibly kinetic; there are zooms and
tracks and swirls in all sorts of interior dialogue scenes where
you really don't expect to see that kind of camera work. It all
fits beautifully. Telling montages of sound and image by Thelma
Schoonmaker (the rattrap, the paperwork stacking up in the office
as Bronson Pinchot talks in the first scene).

One of the best pictures of the year.  Four stars out of four.


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com