A rather geeky young professor (Griffin Dunne) meets, by chance, a young lady (Rosanna Arquette),in a diner, gets her phone number, and later meets her in her Spring Street Apartment for a night he obviously won't forget, no matter how hard he tries. The lives of the people in this trendy but eccentric Manhattan neighborhood surround an artistic flare that reveals their offbeat personalities, some of them not so flattering. The all-night attempt to escape from this nightmare consists of suicide, robbery, plaster bagels and an ice cream truck which still annoyingly plays the same redundant tune over and over 30 years later.

In the course of 90 minutes, the unlucky hero finds himself loosing $20 (flying out of a speeding cab window),finding out that his beautiful date is a neurotic, makes the dominatrix roommate accidentally fall asleep while giving her a seductive massage, finds himself short on change during a sudden rain downpour to pay the newly raised train fare, floods the bathroom of a trusting bartender, and ends up with a vigilante group on his hands who believe him to be a serial apartment thief. And that doesn't even top it, his attempted escape from this so bizarrely artistic that he ends up feeling like Frankenstein's monster.

This is a who's who of cult actors from Teri Garr as a bee-hived bar waitress with definite self-hatred issues, John Heard as the overwhelmed bartender, Catherine O'Hara as a perky ice cream truck vendor who suddenly turns into Rambo. Arquette, as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown whom Dunne heads downtown to meet, dominates the first quarter of the film. If you thought that Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon had issues in Manhattan as "The Out of Towners", these freaks will have you laughing in irony (considering their victim is a native),and a walk down these overly compact and crowded So Ho streets will make you question why people live here in this trendy but overpriced youth obsessed neighborhood that sometimes seems surrealistic and out of step with the rest of the Big Apple.

While reading the Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in a coffee shop, the bored word processor Paul Hackett (Griffe Dunne) meets Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette),and she gives her phone number to him. Close to midnight, Paul decides to call her and she invites him to visit her in the loft of her friend, the sculptor Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino),in Soho. Paul gets a taxi and loses his money through the open window of the cab. Paul arrives in Kiki's place, where begins his surrealistic adventure along the night.

I do not know how many times I have seen this movie along my life, maybe ten times, but it still attracts me and now I have just seen it for the first time on DVD. I love it and it is one of my favorite cult movies. The surrealistic 'saga' of Paul Hackett trapped in Soho without means to return home is fantastic and fascinate me. The cast, direction, soundtrack and camera are excellent. I believe it is the best role and performance of Griffin Dunne in his career. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): 'Depois de Horas' ('After Hours (literally)')

I had never heard of this dark comedy, directed by Martin Scorsese. Griffin Dunne, lonely and depressed, meets a rather scatterbrained but very pretty girl in a coffee shop. She gives him her number and this leads to a nightmare evening where Dunne's character, Paul, hits the waves of a violent sea that drives him back and forth. He only has a few bucks and loses it. This is only the start of his problems where he ends up literally running for his life. But each encounter brings with it hope and then defeat. We have some 1980's stalwarts, including Teri Garr and Catherine O'Hara (yes, from Schitt's Creek),and John Heard. Don't miss this. It's a masterpiece.