Happy New Year!
Thank you to everyone who made it out last month for The Green Knight, even though I completely forgot to make a blog post or booklet! Hey, there's a baby in my house now, I've been distracted.
Anyway, a new year always brings with it a whole slew of new movies. We will be starting 2026 with Martin Scorsese's After Hours.
After Hours is a 1985 American neo-noir black comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Joseph Minion, and produced by Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne, and Robert F. Colesberry. Dunne stars as Paul Hackett, an office worker who experiences a series of misadventures while attempting to make his way home from Manhattan's SoHo district during the night.
After Hours grossed only $10.1 million in the United States, but was given positive reviews and has since been considered an "underrated" entry in the director's filmography. The film won Scorsese the Best Director award at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and allowed him to take a hiatus from the tumultuous development of The Last Temptation of Christ. It currently holds a 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert initially gave it 4/4 stars and later added it to his list of The Great Movies, saying this in his review, "Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” is a comedy, according to the strict definition of that word. It is, however, the tensest comedy I can remember, building its nightmare situation step by insidious step until our laughter is hollow, or defensive. This is the work of a master filmmaker who controls his effects so skillfully that I was drained by this film – so emotionally depleted that there was a moment, two-thirds of the way through, when I wondered if maybe I should leave the theater and gather my thoughts and come back later for the rest of the “comedy.” The result is a film that is so original, so particular, that we are uncertain from moment to moment exactly how to respond to it. The style of the film creates, in us, the same feeling that the events in the film create in the hero.
We will be meeting Thursday, January 22 at 5:30 pm.
Here's a trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkruzyfYR4A
Hope to see you there!
