Rent After Hours (1985)

3.6 of 5 from 181 ratings
1h 32min
Rent After Hours (aka A Night in SoHo / Lies) Online DVD & Blu-ray Rental
  • General info
  • Available formats
Synopsis:
Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman (Rosanna Arquette). So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences - involving underground - art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight-pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home.
With this Kafkaesque cult classic, Martin Scorsese-abetted by Michael Ballhaus's kinetic cinematography and scene-stealing supporting turns by Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, and John Heard - directed a darkly comic tale of mistaken identity, turning the desolate night world of 1980s SoHo into a bohemian wonderland of surreal menace.
Actors:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Clarke Evans,
Directors:
Producers:
Robert F. Colesberry, Griffin Dunne, Amy Robinson
Writers:
Joseph Minion
Aka:
A Night in SoHo / Lies
Genres:
Comedy, Drama, Thrillers
Collections:
Cinema's Most Memorable Comedy Double Acts, Films & TV by topic, The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Martin Scorsese, The Instant Expert's Guide to: Brian De Palma
Awards:

1986 Cannes Best Director

BBFC:
Release Date:
Not released
Run Time:
92 minutes
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
Subtitles:
Arabic, English, English Hard of Hearing, French, Italian, Italian Hard of Hearing, Romanian
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen 1.85:1
Colour:
Colour
Bonus:
  • Commentary by Scorsese, Dunne, Roninson, Schoonmaker and Michael Ballhaus
  • Filming For Your Life: Making After Hours
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Trailer
BBFC:
Release Date:
09/10/2023
Run Time:
97 minutes
Languages:
English Mono
Subtitles:
English Hard of Hearing
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen 1.85:1
Colour:
Colour
BLU-RAY Regions:
B
Bonus:
  • New conversation between director Martin Scorsese and writer Fran Lebowitz
  • Audio commentary featuring Scorsese, Schoonmaker, director of photography Michael Ballhaus, actor and producer Griffin Dunne, and producer Amy Robinson
  • Documentary about the making of the film featuring Dunne, Robinson, Schoonmaker, and Scorsese
  • New program on the look of the film featuring costume designer Rita Ryack and production designer Jeffrey Townsend
  • Deleted scenes
  • Trailer
BBFC:
Release Date:
09/10/2023
Run Time:
97 minutes
Languages:
English Mono
Subtitles:
English Hard of Hearing
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen 1.85:1
Colour:
Colour
BLU-RAY Regions:
B

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Reviews (3) of After Hours

Not the after hours I was used to as a young man! - After Hours review by Strovey

Spoiler Alert
31/08/2019

Made in 1985 Scorsese’s lesser-known black comedy seen through the lens of 2019 is a strange little movie. Increasingly it reminded me of a wacky BBC comedy of errors, including the usual well-known faces, Teri Garr, William Heard, Catherine O’Hara all turn up like some Terry and June episode. Although the story is undoubtedly dark and adult unfortunately the escalating farcical nature of what happens is the type of story that has always annoyed the heck out of me – when the old 1970s British sitcoms did it, when Frasier did it, it annoyed me, characters doing stupid things that lead onto even more stupid events when all anyone ever has to do is talk to each other – I would say it’s an age thing but it’s not, it annoyed me as a teenager.

Having said that the acting is quirky and fun with the highly underrated Griffin Dunne supplying an almost pitch-perfect nervous, fraught ‘little man’ up to his neck in circumstances he cannot understand in a world he does not live in, even though to be honest it was not a sympathetic or likable character, hopefully this was purposeful. Along the way we get to see ‘quirky’ characters who populate Soho ‘after hours’. Rosanna Arquette and and almost unrecoganisable Linda Fiorentino share a flat in what seems to start off as an off-kilter love story but veers into weirdland and there the film and story stays.

Therein is the problem with the film, it starts off comedic almost romantic and then careers off the road into a dark territory where we see people having sex ala a ‘Rear Window’ device and then an out and out cold-blooded murder, there’s suicide the list is wackily endless. But I didn’t find it wacky and the longer it went on the more I felt that I just wanted Paul to get home.

You can certainly see in some shots and framing Scorsese honing his skills for his future output but in someways this is also a problem for me as the film seems a practice, a students work if you will, before the director got better.

After Hours is not bad but it seems a film not made for my tastes, it was something I was happy to watch, was very 80s in the style and cinematography but not anything I would watch again unless it was on a channel I was flicking through late at night. I did not laugh much for a comedy, black or not.

2 out of 4 members found this review helpful.

Intriguing Film From Scorsese - After Hours review by GI

Spoiler Alert
07/05/2024

This is one of director Martin Scorsese's minor masterpieces, often forgotten when his films are studied or discussed but an essential one of his New York centrally based narratives. It's quirky little drama with comedy undertones and a great central performance from Griffin Dunne. It may seem a little dated in some ways but it's such an unusual and cleverly scripted film with shades of Alfred Hitchcock in the use of the camera that it's well worth discovering if, like me, it has passed you by. Dunne plays Paul, a bored computer operator in a New York firm. After work one evening he meets Marcie (Rosanna Arquette) and attracted to her he goes to her apartment. This sets him on a night of bizarre and frustrating experiences where coincidence and trouble abound. It's an intriguing and very entertaining film that goes in some very unlikely directions and has a good cast that includes Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr and John Heard.

0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.

Essentially a mad cap film reinterpretation of Franz Kafka's The Trial - After Hours review by AER

Spoiler Alert
13/04/2024

Essentially, Martin Scorses's After Hours is a mad cap film reinterpretation of Franz Kafka's The Trial. It's one of those half-remembered 80s films that got broadcast on late-night TV and you ha;f-remember all through your years, then you track it down to reassess it. the Criterion Collection has blew the dust off Scorsese's strangest film , and I'd say its worth a look even though it's light, annoying, infuriating (like the source material), funny, bonkers, and very 80s. The cast are wonderful in the main, and the ending is a doozy. It's fun to see forgotten counter culture heads like Cheech and Chong show up alongside John Heard,, Linda Fiorentino, Rosanna Arquette and Teri Garr. Griffin Dunne is awesome as the Josef K proxy and some of the set-pieces/non-sequiteurs are very funny. It's slight but if you get it, it's yours for life.

0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.

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