Film Review: After Hours (1985)

Also known as: Lies (script title), A Night In Soho (working title)
Release Date: September 11th, 1985 (New York City premiere)
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Joseph Minion, Joe Frank
Music by: Howard Shore
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Thomas Chong, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Cheech Marin, Catherine O’Hara, Dick Miller, Will Patton, Bronson Pinchot, Martin Scorsese (cameo)

Double Play, The Geffen Company, 97 Minutes

Review:

“Oh, come on, let’s go find my statue, man. It’s got to be around here someplace. That makes me sick. You know, that statue is the first thing in my life that I ever bought! See what happens when you pay for stuff! Somebody rips it off.” – Neil

How have I never seen this film until now?

While this has been in my queue for quite awhile, I only really heard about it a few years ago. And honestly, that’s kind of unfortunate, as after seeing it, it’s now become one of my all-time favorite Martin Scorsese films.

I think it was forgotten due to it being a straight up comedy, as opposed to his more popular crime films, many of which have received a sort of legendary status as the years have rolled on. However, in its own way, After Hours is just as great and deserves more recognition than it receives.

To start, I’ve always really liked Griffin Dunne since first seeing him as a kid in John Landis’ ’80s horror classic, An American Werewolf In London. Apart from that film, I’ve liked him in everything I’ve seen him in, as he has real charisma and he’s just really damn likable. Taking him and throwing him into this “yuppie in peril” comedy story, just enhances the film greatly in a way that would’ve been hard to achieve with just about anyone else. Dunne is simply perfect as this character.

This is also a big ensemble piece, as the story has so many great characters that weave in and out. It’s well cast from top-to-bottom, however, and there really isn’t anyone that doesn’t pull their weight and give something great to the film.

The story is about Dunne’s Paul, who meets a girl, goes off to see her in Soho and ends up having a series of mishaps that balloon out of control to the point that they would make Larry David jealous. The film slowly escalates but it does so really well, as you eventually get to a point where things are completely bonkers. However, within the rules of this film, which evolve with the story, everything works well and there’s a real magical, charming quality about the movie.

I could see where the finale might be a bit much but I thought it was perfect and brought everything full circle in a rather poetic way.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot as this is probably best enjoyed not knowing much about the details. In fact, even though I always post a trailer at the end of my reviews, if you’ve never seen this, I’d skip the trailer and go into this film completely blind, as I did.

Rating: 9.25/10
Pairs well with: other “yuppie in peril” movies, specifically comedies and from the ’80s.

Film Review: Movie 43 (2013)

Also known as: Truth or Dare (working title)
Release Date: January 1st, 2013 (Russia)
Directed by: Steven Brill, Peter Farrelly, Will Graham, Steve Carr, Griffin Dunne, James Duffy, Jonathan van Tulleken, Elizabeth Banks, Patrik Forsberg, Brett Ratner, Rusty Cundieff, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Steve Baker, Damon Escott
Written by: Steve Baker, Ricky Blitt, Will Carlough, Tobias Carlson, Jacob Fleisher, Patrik Forsberg, Will Graham, James Gunn, Claes Kjellstrom, Jack Kukoda, Bob Odenkirk, Bill O’Malley, Matthew Alec Portenoy, Greg Pritikin, Rocky Russo, Olle Sarri, Elizabeth Wright Shapiro, Jeremy Sosenko, Jonathan van Tulleken, Jonas Wittenmark
Music by: Christophe Beck, David J. Hodge, Leo Birenberg, Tyler Bates, Miles Moon, William Goodrum
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Emma Stone, Jason Sudekis, Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common, Charlie Saxton, Will Sasso, Seth MacFarlane, Mark L. Young, Fisher Stevens, Beth Littleford, Julie Ann Emery, Chris Pratt, J.B. Smoove, Kieran Culkin, Bobby Cannavale, Patrick Warburton, Seann William Scott, Stephen Merchant, Snooki, Emily Alyn Lind, Julianne Moore (scene cut), Tony Shalhoub (scene cut), Bob Odenkirk (scene cut), Anton Yelchin (scene cut)

Relativity Media, Virgin Produced, GreeneStreet Films, 94 Minutes

Review:

“Excuse me, I’m gonna go do some Batman-ing.” – Fake Batman

I never wanted to see this movie and that was before I heard how bad it was when it came out. Also, the few people who seemed to like it were people that have historically had terrible recommendations in not just movies but just about everything in life.

Recently, I was told to watch it and I kind of just said fuck it because part of me was curious and wanted to know if this was as bad as I had heard it was.

It’s worse.

In fact, I can confidently say that this is the biggest waste of talent I have ever seen in a motion picture.

It’s so bad that it’s beyond atrocious. So much so, that I find it not just baffling that this film attracted so many big stars but I find it really unnerving.

Who greenlit this fucking thing? And how many terrible agents are there in Hollywood? Fire all of them!

Anyway, I had to start asking myself some questions while trying to work this film’s existence out in my brain:

1. Is everyone in Hollywood actually insane?
2. Do the Hollywood elite want all of us to commit seppuku?
3. Do the Hollywood elite think that sucking their own assholes is a good use of time?
4. Did this movie somehow leak over from a parallel dimension where Earth actually is Hell?
5. Did all of these “artists” commit some unspeakable crime and this was secretly some sort of punishment for said crime?
6. Did all of these people lose a bet?
7. Was this movie actually the result of a writing contest for mental patients?
8. Is this what people mean by “anti-humor”?
9. Did the person who put up the money have some sort of Brewster’s Millions deal where they had to throw away money to get their full inheritance?
10. Was this produced to debut on an earlier, failed attempt at CBS trying a streaming service?

I mean, those are all legitimate questions. In fact, I’d say that they’re more legitimate than this film.

This is the worst movie I’ve seen that was made for more than thirty dollars.

The film was full of crude jokes, none of which landed, and it offered up a bunch of gross out moments that just come across as Hollywood trying so hard to be edgy when in reality, they haven’t had their fucking balls in a long time.

Honestly, seeing how “politically correct” and “apologetic” the Hollywood elite have become since SJWs emerged and Cancel Culture took hold, this film feels like them desperately trying to get all the edgy shit out of their system before they all started their “I’m sorry, I’ll strive to do better” world tour.

Additionally, none of these gross out moments are all that effective if you’ve been a fan of ’70s and ’80s horror. Go watch Society and try again. Better yet, you shouldn’t have tried at all.

I think that film critic Robbie Collin said it best in his review of the movie:

“I was immediately overcome with a sudden rush of emotion: not amusement, anger or even mild irritation, but a profound and faintly tragic sense of pity.”

Speaking of reviews, let’s look at what all the big sites think. IMDb gives it a 4.3/10, Rotten Tomatoes gives it 5 percent from critics with 24 percent from the audience, Metacritic gives it an 18 percent and Richard Roeper referred to it as “the Citizen Kane of awful.”

In closing, I’ll simply state:

Rating: 0/10
Pairs well with: bad cavities and genital warts.

Film Review: An American Werewolf In London (1981)

Release Date: August 21st, 1981
Directed by: John Landis
Written by: John Landis
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
Cast: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodvine, Sydney Bromley, Frank Oz

PolyGram Pictures, The Guber-Peters Company, Producers Sales Organization, Universal Pictures, 97 Minutes

Review:

“How could there have been witnesses? It was so dark. We were running, and I fell and Jack went to help me up, and this thing came from nowhere. I don’t know what they’re talking about.” – David

The 1980s were populated with horror movies from indie studios and a lot of straight-to-VHS fare. Sure, the major studios were in on the game too but they turned out only a few real gems compared to what the indie filmmakers were churning out to fill the mom and pop video stores and the remaining drive-in theaters. An American Werewolf In London is one example of a big studio film that really hit the mark for horror aficionados.

It was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom and was filmed in the UK with a mix of American and British actors.

This was John Landis’ second attempt at a horror picture after his directorial debut, 1973’s Schlock. That movie was a horror comedy that saw an apeman fall in love with a blind girl and terrorize a Southern California suburb. Between Schlock and An American Werewolf In London, Landis directed the cult comedies The Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and The Blues Brothers.

While this film is more serious and has a lot of dark humor, as opposed to slapstick and parody, it is still quite funny and hits its mark well. The stuff with David talking to his undead friend Jack are some of the best bits in the film, as they bring humor into a really dark and disturbing situation.

I loved this movie when I was a kid and the main reason was because of Rick Baker’s magnificent special effects. In the day of practical effects, this picture really set the bar at a new level. The werewolf transformation scene is still the best in the history of cinema. Sure, you can do more with CGI effects today but they don’t look as cool and certainly don’t have the same sense of realism that real life physical effects have on camera. Now these effects may look dated today but there was nothing better than this in 1981. While I love the effects in The Howling, which was another 1981 werewolf movie, Rick Baker upped the ante with this picture and he would take this experience and go on to wow audiences for years.

The animatronic werewolf puppet still looks cool as hell and this beast was huge. Frankly, this is my favorite werewolf in film history. The design was absolutely perfect.

The special effects makeup that was applied to Griffin Dunne’s Jack was also stupendous. Each version of Dunne’s character was great, as he rotted away with each appearance until he was mostly just an animatronic corpse in the movie theater scene at the end. His makeup in his first appearance as the undead Jack was just brutal.

The film also benefits from great dream sequences, the best one being the hoard of Nazi monsters that shoots up David’s family.

There is also a brief cameo from Yoda himself, Frank Oz.

It also doesn’t hurt that Jenny Agutter is in this because she was a woman I was crushing on hard when I was kid, between this film and Logan’s Run.

An American Werewolf In London is a perfect storm for an 80s horror movie. It would go on to inspire a slew of other great 80s horror pictures and without it, the world just wouldn’t be as cool.

Rating: 9.25/10