Boogie Nights

Boogie Nights is one of the key movies of the 1990s and among the most ambitious and exuberantly alive American movies in years. It's also the breakthrough for an amazing new director, whose dazzling kaleidoscopic style here recalls the Robert Altman of Nashville and the Martin Scorsese of Good Fellas. Although loosely based on the sleazy life and times of real-life porn legend John Holmes, at heart it's a classic Hollywood rise-and-fall fable: a naive, good-looking young busboy is discovered in a San Fernando Valley disco by a famous motion picture producer, becomes a hotshot movie star, lives the high life and then loses everything when he gets too big for his britches, succumbs to insobriety and is left behind by new times and new technology. Of course, it isn't exactly A Star Is Born or Singin' in the Rain. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (in only his second feature!) puts his own affectionately sardonic twist on the old showbiz biopic formula: the ambitious upstart changes his name and achieves stardom in porno films as "Dirk Diggler." Instead of drinking to excess, he snorts cocaine (the classic drug of 70s hedonism); and it's the coming of home video (rather than talkies) that helps to dash his big-screen dreams. As for the britches ... well, the controversial "money shot" explains everything. And the cast is one of the great ensembles of the 90s, including Oscar nominees Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore, Mark Wahlberg (who really can act--from the waist up, too!), Heather Graham (as Rollergirl), William H. Macy, John C. Reilly and Ricky Jay.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• music
• dancing
• the 70s

[mykylc]

@randomiszen No doubt a masterpiece of hard work and patience.

[RealEstatebyErwin]

Classic film

[blues713317]

Yea, hands down an amazing movie. This flick fires on all cylinders, acting, story, music, editing, directing, etc.. Very epic and underrated I think. But that is probably because of the content of the film (porn industry).

[bucky468]

@ChicagoMonsterPunk Boogie Nites didn't deserve the number of Oscar nominations it got. Admit it - you know SNF was blatantly copied.

[ChicagoMonsterPunk]

@bucky468

You best be trolling.

[kookoopops1]

the period is captured brilliantly. its as if the movie was made at the time it portrays.

[bucky468]

Saturday Night Fever ripoff flick.

SNF pwns BN x1000!!

[cevmob]

10minutemoviesandtv how could you NOT mention that the brilliant Don Cheadle also was in Boogie Nights?!!!

[Mandi7882]

Thank you for uploading!

[delong71487]

@equirneh Awesome, thanks.

[equirneh]

@delong71487 Hi there.

The name of the song is "Sunny", written by Bobby Hebb. The disco version we listen here was recorded by a group called Boney M.