Review of Boogie Nights (1997) by Jake Z — 05 Nov 2015

PTA's "Boogie Nights" is just a really good movie. It features (mostly) great performances from its fairly large cast and fantastic direction from one of the greatest living filmmakers and one of the greatest American filmmakers to ever live.

The only downside to how it was directed, and a general problem with a lot of PTA's work, is that lengthy dialogue sequences aren't shot too dynamically. A lot of it is simply shot/reverse shot close-ups.

Sometimes this works really well when you have a great actor and a great script (as is the case with Mr. Anderson's masterpiece There WIll Be Blood), and although the script was not bad by any means, it really lacked something that made listening to these people talk a bit trying at times.

Perhaps it felt repetitive, I'd probably have to re-watch it to determine exactly why. I was really interested to see how Paul Thomas Anderson would tackle a subject like the 70's porn industry, but he's a man who can make anything fascinating.

The movie is (mostly) rife with humor that pokes fun at its subject and is always entertaining. I'll admit my mind started to wander from the movie during the last half hour, although it wasn't dull in any way.

This is a movie that has a large cast of characters, which can sometimes really hinder a movie, but PTA pulls it off so well (mostly with the brilliant opening shot of the movie). However, the greatest pitfall of this movie is none other than it's lead: Marky Mark.

I know it is an unpopular opinion, but I think Mark Wahlberg just isn't a good actor. He just didn't convince me in this movie. I just see Mark Wahlberg in every movie he's in, he's never his character.

However, everyone else is great. Once again, this is just a pretty damn good movie, but Mark should definitely have stuck to rap. He spit some pretty hot fire, yo.