theCLog

By Brooke Edge

I just completed an intensive summer course on “Martin Scorsese’s New York” at NYU. It was four hours of Scorsese, four nights a week, for three weeks. If I never see Robert DeNiro again, it’ll be too soon. In the roster of movies we watched was the usual Italian-American fare (Mean Streets, GoodFellas, Raging Bull), the historical looks back at the city (The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York), and the titular homage to the city (the interminable New York, New York). One film in the bunch took me by surprise, though — After Hours.

I’d never heard of After Hours, perhaps because when it was released in 1985, I was far more concerned with my family’s recent addition of the Disney Channel to our cable lineup than with Martin Scorsese’s oeuvre. Maybe everyone else out there (beyond the folks I’ve talked with who are just as clueless as me) already knows about After Hours. If I’m not too much of an anomaly, though, this has become my latest Netflix recommendation (it’s even available for instant gratification streaming).

So if you want something short, funny, weird, and frustrating, and you can deal with the absurdity of the surreal (and get over the dated obstacle of no one carrying an ATM card or having a cell phone), I suggest checking it out. If the idea of watching 97 minutes of a guy trying to get out of the clutches of crazed insomniac artsy types sounds unbearable, skip it. This movie will make you want to tear your hair out.

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