cult film freak: MARTIN SCORSESE DIRECTS GRIFFIN DUNNE IN 'AFTER HOURS'

Title: AFTER HOURS Cast: Griffin Dunne, Patricia Arquette Year: 1985 Rating: *****

For the then very underrated, semi-underground and mostly unrewarded director Martin Scorsese, between his 1990 breakthrough GOODFELLAS and gritty boxing biopic RAGING BULL... at the beginning of the otherwise comparably anti-arthouse 1980's, he created his most thrilling and outright entertaining, hilarious feature film...

And the neo noir comedy AFTER HOURS provides some of Scorsese's best visual direction — every single movement of every single person that central lead Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett encounters is covered by either creative slow-pans or signature quick-zoom-shots, rhythmically in-step with precise, strategically-offbeat cinematography and editing...

Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette in AFTER HOURS

White rabbit Rosanna Arquette plays Marcy, a fickle beauty initially leading Hackett to the progressing nightmare of post-midnight Soho, New York, a neon purgatory...

She drives our bored, passively-glib and borderline neurotic computer processor subtly nuts as the location takes on a vividly bizarre, everything-goes-wrong character all its own...

Griffin Dunne in AFTER HOURS

Also involving other unpredictable dames, like Arquette's sultry sculptor roommate Linda Florentino, Teri Garr as a neo hippie-chick and Catherine O'Hara, an ice cream lady who winds up leading the proverbial torch-lit mob after a single guy who, like the director himself, yearned for something new and exciting...

Overall the AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON fan-favorite actor makes the perfect cinematic pawn (especially each time he's suddenly/momentarily defensive) for Scorsese to pull the strings, quicker and more adventurous than he'd ever done before.