Review of Boogie Nights (1997) by Omar L — 30 Oct 2010

Boogie Nights is about the pornography industrys rise in the late 70s and its fall in the early 80s. Sex was safe in the 70s and cocaine hadnt yet caught on in the way it would strangle the early 80s. The story has an amazing palette of richly colorful characters. The music like any great film is a character of its own.

Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore are very impressive and deserved their Academy Award nominations for strong supporting performances. This is one of the best ensemble casts Ive ever seen in film. Burt Reynolds plays the character Jack Horner who is a low budget Hugh Hefner type director. He truly cares about his art and has a dream of making an adult film that will keep someone glued in their seats from beginning to end due to a strong story and characters. He fights his producers over artistic vision instead of making an extra buck. Mark Walberg plays the star Dirk Diggler and he adds the perfect blend of innocence and sexual pride. We watch his innocent rise and his slippery fall due to a drug called cocaine and its ability to bring out a monster called pride within him. Walbergs character is based on real life porn star John Holmes, who like Dirk is renowned for being extremely well endowed. Julianne Moore plays a veteran star that is a mother to all and shes harboring a deep loss that we come to find out within the story. Roller Girl is played by Heather Graham who holds her own nicely alongside the rest of the cast. There are too many wonderful characters to dive into. Don Cheadle, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C Reilly, and William H Macy are all excellent.

The sex and nudity in this film arent explicit, but whats left to your imagination is powerful. Cocaine is shown as fun and hip at the beginning, but an early scene foreshadows its darkness in American culture. At its heart Boogie Nights is a simple morality tale. Yet another masterpiece from director Paul Thomas Anderson. 10/10 from me.