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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: New Line Home Video
Salesrank: 25556
Released: April 7, 1998 |
| Our Price: $39.30 |
| Used Price: $5.96 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Even if the notorious 1970s porn-filmmaking milieu doesn't exactly turn you on, don't let it turn you off to this movie's extraordinary virtues, either. 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 GoodFellas. 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 ain'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. --Jim Emerson
Boogie Nights Reviews:
Behind the scenes of a different family 
2009-11-26 - Boogie Nights is a great movie, a blend of insight in the porn industry (similar to Singin' in the Rain's theme of how talkies ___________ up silent films, although it's not lighthearted or satrized), Character study that comments on certain things of society, partying and fun ala Dazed, and a pop culture landscape of the disco scene, the other part of the 70's (the most impressive thing is it makes the disco scene look somewhat decent). While Boogie Nights suffers from some bits of third person syndrome, it helps that these characters are interseting, they are usually doing something interesting, and this is another set of characters that are hard not to love.
Boogie Nights has a unusual background, as all these people are porn stars one way or another. But this movie portrays these porn stars in such a good light, as these guys are just another family, people with ambition, who are open minded, good people, and are able to talk about $#% in such a natural way. And even though the porn and nudity doesn't at all turn me on (similar to Eyes Wide Shut), it doesn't have to. Besides, Boogie Nights has much to offer than pornography. This is a real movie, made with real directing, real actors, a cross between Clerks/Slacker conversations and a plot with drama (not the girl kind). Not to mention a disco sound track that would make Tarantino proud, this is the kind of sound track Tarantino could put together if he had to put disco music in order to get into the mood.
One thing I don't quite understand is how the Tarantino comparison really comes up being close. Tarantino's movies are ultra sylized genre busters. Paul Thomas Anderson's movies don't feel anything like a Tarantino movie. I think the only thing is that both directors are maverick directors who write their own material, and as evident with Boogie Nights, both can compose a sound track. I'm actually not familiar with other Anderson movies actually, but there are clear differences between the two directors.
Sure, I don't like this as much as Dazed or a Tarantino movies, but Paul Thomas Anderson has much in common with the other film majors who came from watching hundreds of mmovies and developing their own style through something.
B-
Don't know... 
2009-10-11 - I enjoy films that depict this epoch and this one relived this period quite and parts of it were very engaging. But I am against all forms of pornography and I do not support movies that show drugs, violence because these do not contribute to a better society and young people who see movies with violence and drugs, etc., get wrongly influenced.
Terrific satire of late-'70s
2009-08-19 - I complained a lot about films in the '80s which were too stiff and self-conscious to pull off a period piece attempting to portray another decade.
So what a relief it was when the '90s started and it was apparent the new decade wouldn't have the same problem.
1997's BOOGIE NIGHTS, about the porn industry of the late-'70s, is terrific fun for any number of reasons: the casting, the production design, the "period" style of the thing... Burt Reynolds plays a slightly pathetic porno-director at the end of the grainy, earthy sex-on-celluloid era which is about to be overtaken by the videotaped, sanitized, twinky zone of the '80s... Other actors are noteable, including Heather Graham, Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, etc. Oh, and how could one forget Philip Seymour Hoffman and his quivering boom-mike??
But Mark Wahlberg's casting makes the thing work, not simply because of his build (a lot of buff actors exist out there) but his demeanor--- his relaxed, lost, slightly forlorn, semi-arrogantly knuckle-headed vulnerability... he absolutely SCREAMS late-'70s teenager. (I'm not sure if Mr. Wahlberg has ever understood how "right" he got it with his performance).
The movie, naturally, is a bit of a parody of the time, yet within that spirit of parody, gets the disco era much, much more right than it does wrong. Period zeitgeist is always made up of more than just mere physicality, and BOOGIE NIGHTS, through whatever method, manages to convince you that 1977 is actually 1977. And that's no small praise.
There are some elements the film probably misses. When one recalls the late-'70s --- especially as it might relate to the sex/porn industry --- it's might be easy to ignore or forget its aspect of superlative sleaze; it was the time of early-Sex Pistols (before "real" punk got cleaned up in the '80s), CALIGULA, Studio 54 (no, not that terribly watered-down film with Ryan Phillippe years later) when a certain sexuality of degradation seemed to reach its apotheosis... If you side-step or miss that "sick" note of that time, you've almost missed the time... Admittedly, BOOGIE NIGHTS, deliberately or not, doesn't "get" that element; it's all a bit too giddy and innocent to do so (although that rings true, too). And yet I'm kind of glad it didn't go into that gutter; otherwise, the film would have likely slid into something else too unseemly, and the things it got right might have run the risk of being negated or overshadowed.
A good, delightfully silly picture. And it's pretty impressive that PT Anderson, so young at the time, could pull this off so correctly.
Boogie Nights 
2009-06-21 - this is a great movie. To me it is a classic. Burt Reynolds was great. And of course Mark Walhberg is wonderful
dvd won't play 
2009-06-03 - This dvd won't play. I've tried on several different players. its not scratched up or anything it just doesn't play.
