Boogie Nights (1997)

Go away naysayers, move past the porn theme and see this film for what it is. The greatest movie ever! Paul Thomas Anderson captured magic in a bottle. The dialogue, the music, the cinematography all works in sync. I'll take the pool scene over some sled any day. I await your blah, blah , blah. This is a real movie!

Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough feature is an impeccably produced homage to the 'Golden Age of Porn' that captures the style & ethos of its era with remarkable accuracy, offers an insight into the pornography business like nothing before, and also makes up for a fascinating character study. Masterly directed, deftly scripted, ingeniously photographed, finely edited & strongly performed, Boogie Nights remains one of Anderson's finest directorial efforts, and is one of the best all-round films of its decade.

Boogie Nights is a very good drama about the porn industry. Paul Thomas Anderson did a very good job directing and writing. It is very well shot, particularly the costumes and music. It is fast moving the story never lags. It has wonderful script. It uses multiple characters with different personalities and motivations. It shows the industry from many points of view. I like that he didn't hold back on the drug and sex scenes it gave it a raw authentic look. It has excellent performances by Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, and Julianne Moore. It also has a wonderful supporting cast with wonderful performances by John C Reilly, William H Macy, Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and many others. Boogie Nights is not a movie for everyone do to the rough nature and content. However it is one of Paul Thomas Andersons best movies, and one of the best dramas from the 1990's. I have seen it several times over the years, and I enjoy it and get more impressed with it each time. It is very good.

Paul Thomas Anderson is somewhat of a frustration. He is a director with obvious talent but his films seem to have a very hollow center and feel more fragmentary than a complete film. Boogie Nights has a great energy and superficially present the early days of the adult entertainment industry. It is very loosely based on the career of John Holmes but does not really get into the darker aspects of his story when he was still making porn films while knowing that he was infected with the AIDS virus and probably infecting his unaware co stars. Like The Master Anderson really never goes too deep into the motivations of his characters and seems to focus on the more lurid aspects, wallowing in the excesses of the decade. There are plenty of great performances in the film and make it worth re watching periodically. The most sympathetic character is played Don Cheadle but I like the little family that forms amongst Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, and Mark Walberg is genuinely sweet at times. But the excesses the era and the industry they are in cannot be entirely kept at bay and sets up the third act downward spiral. The soundtrack is spectacular and is a great sampler of the 70's but can be a bit overbearing at times in the course of the film, jumping from one song and going right into another...and then another. It is like a juke box that someone pumped a sack full of quarters into and you just want a little quiet time. I recommend to anyone interested in the subject to read a book called The Other Hollywood which expands on a lot of the subjects that Boogie Nights covers but with much more detail and insight into the darker aspects of adult pornography industry. Boogie Nights is flawed but has ambition.