After Hours

1985 riddle

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Paul's ready to unwind after another boring day at his boring job with Balki Bartokomous. While reading at a coffee shop, he strikes up a conversation with an attractive girl and calls her up later that night. After hours. When he decides to meet her for a date (after hours), it sets off a surreal chain of events that all add up to one really crappy evening for poor Paul.

About halfway through this movie, Jen walked into the room, watched for a little bit, and then asked what was going on. This is the type of movie that makes questions like that nearly impossible to answer which is one of the reasons I love it. So much happens to poor Paul, the protagonist being a sort of straight man for one giant cosmic joke. There's an exquisite randomness to the proceedings, but at the same time, some parallel moments, some recurring imagery, and some self-referential gags fool you into thinking there's a method to the madness. Is there? I'm not sure it matters. This is a nearly-hilarious black comedy, something you can only watch late at night (after hours). It also works as a sleep-deprived absurdist noir, as a goofy Hitchcock homage, and as a cartoonish suspense flick. Very much in the like-it-or-lump-it category of movies, I think it's easily one of Scorsese's most fun movies.