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11/28/2013

Boogie Nights (1997) - Anderson's irresistable porn 'Casino'



+ Shooting Star Actor of the Year: Mark Wahlberg


Cartoonized version of many of the characters in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights

QUICK REVIEW:

Boogie Nights is a movie about life in the American porn business in the 1970s and '80s. It is to porn what Casino (1995) is to Vegas: A glitzy semi-fact-based chronicle. A simultaneously glamorous and sober recap of porn's explosion into major dollars.
Mark Wahlberg (Three Kings (1999)), who is putting himself into the Oscar race right now by co-producing and starring in Lone Survivor (2013), has one of his career's best parts here and gives a splendid performance in his breakthrough role as donkey dick with limited brains, Dirk Diggler/Eddie Adams (based on porn legend John Holmes). The rest of the cast is so star-studded that you just have to keep watching, and many deliver outstanding supporting performances:
Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda (2004)) is priceless; and so is Burt Reynolds (Deliverance (1972)), who was Oscar-nominated for his part as porn director. Julianne Moore (The Hours (2002)) is heartbreaking as porn actress/neglecting mother; and finally Heather Graham (From Hell (2001)) is sugar-sweet as Rollergirl.
Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Thomas Jane and Alfred Molina also have enjoyable minor parts.
Photography-wise, Boogie Nights is a study in long, complicated travelings and hard contrast cuts. Fine work by cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood (2007)).
The film marked writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough as well, after his debut, the much lesser known crime drama Hard Eight (1996). He is now one of the 5 best American directors working today.
Boogie Nights is a decadent, sexy, incredibly casted, eclectic film. A tour de force in cinematic skill and great period music. It booms with great scenes and wonderful performances, but almost all scenes are also overly long, which makes the film a special experience: It's never boring, but it is unmistakable over-long at 155 minutes.
A few established actors turned down the main part in the film; Vincent Gallo, Joaquin Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio (in favor of Titanic (1997)), and especially Gallo must have later regretted this. 
Reynolds only reluctantly agreed to play the porn director Jack Horner. He and Anderson didn't get along during shooting, and Reynolds subsequently regretted doing the film, and even reportedly hit Anderson, who still wanted to cast Reynolds for his following film, Magnolia (1999), which Reynolds turned down. Quite a few people now consider Boogie Nights Burt Reynolds best work. Talk about an ironic turn.


Burt Reynolds as Jack Horner in Boogie Nights, with Philip Seymour Hoffman on his left, and William H. Macy right behind him. The old wolf and sex icon has a great part in the film, but embarrassed himself off-camera. In one of life's great ironies, it seems that Reynolds might have thought it was the other way around

Anderson has made his best film yet in the oil drama, There Will Be Blood (2007), and is editing his next film at the moment, Inherent Vice (2014), another LA-set drug-and-crime-movie in the '70s, led by Joaquin Phoenix.

Related post:

1997 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Watch the tantalizing trailer here

Budget: 15 mil. $
Box office: 43 mil. $
= Big hit

Additions to the Reynolds' affair are welcomed
What do you think of Boogie Nights and Anderson's other films?
Other good films about the porn industry?

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