Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The Movie Diorama Can't say I've seen many theatrical released dramas about adult films, so this is new territory. Pornography is, obviously, very popular and this film showcases the rise of said industry in the 70's and its downhill in the 80's. It centres around the fictional Dirk Diggler (that name...it's just beautiful) and how he finds success through a adult film director named Jack Horner. Being in that type of business, Dirk starts becoming susceptible to the lavish lifestyle and the drugs and crime that follow. A fascinating albeit daring subject to tackle, director Paul Thomas Anderson manages to make it a rather compelling story. Slight tonal inconsistencies, particularly in the third act where it just loses steam but overall I found this to be thoroughly entertaining with dark comedic moments. It's another Anderson movie where his direction takes precedent. Super nice long takes that just lets the characters interact. Whether it be having sex, sniffing cocaine or running away from a shotgun wielding psychopath, the characters resembled the 70's. The disco attire looked fantastically authentic and really made me want to get down and boogie in my lounge (was so tempted...). Acting was outstanding all round. Julianne Moore and Burt Reynolds deserved their award nominations. Mark Wahlberg pulled off that sparky confident teenager role well. When it came to filming the pornography, the acting was incredibly cheesy which was sooo good to see. They honestly nailed it. Then seeing how porn progressed to amateur and drive-by within the 80's was interesting. I'm not addicted to porn or anything, but it's a refreshing subject to watch instead of slavery, haunted houses or World War II. So yes, despite the inconsistent tones this was incredibly enjoyable with phenomenal direction.

Smoreni Zmaj At the end of 70's, porn director, who dreams of making porn and "real" movie fusion as his life masterpiece, meets extremely endowed young man, and there starts the story of the rise, culmination and downfall of the great porn star. This drama which, without prejudice and attitude, impartially tells about 70's porn industry, at the very transition from a theaters to video tapes, I watched primarily because of fantastic cast. Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Heather Graham, William H. Macy, William H. Macy and three Academy Awards nominations grant at least that it's not a bad movie. Screenplay is pretty much cliche story about rise and fall of any star in showbusiness, but acting and characterization are really good and make us bind to the characters real easy. Also, beautiful (and naked) women and good music are always welcome bonus. But this potential masterpiece is flawed by its length. It is good, but not good enough to hold undivided attention for two and a half hours. Somewhere about half it's began to loosen its grip and, I can not say I was bored, but it simply lost me. Still, it's cast is reason enough to recommend it anyway.7/10

pretentiousanderson Having grown up on watching movies and having no reason for making them other than to ape his idols, Anderson lifts the template from Scorsese's Goodfellas in this adolescent ripoff. Tell me - Which film am I describing here? Narrative structure: Set primarily over the course of the mid-1970s through the 80s, a young high-schooler has troubles at home and has to live with abusive family members. He feels trapped in this environment, and to help him escape, he grows attached to a surrogate family whose activities revolve around moral and societal vice. He finds that he excels in this environment and rises quickly in this new family hierarchy, earning both respect and riches from it. He eventually becomes fully initiated into this new family when he passes a test that demonstrates his commitment and talent to the vices that they support, and he is then rewarded by this new family with a celebration. At near mid-point, a "retro reel" involving 8mm or 16mm home movies and photos are used in a montage to express the passage of time and the deepening relationship between our protagonist and the other members of his new family. Things are going swimmingly until, at what is supposed to be a fun social occasion among friends, violence unexpectedly breaks out, resulting in murder and death. This scene mid-way through the plot tells the viewer that not all is well within this "fun" social structure, and that its very mores helped to contribute to the mindset that would lead someone to murder. But our protagonist tries to brush aside this violent event as a mere aberration, not wanting to question social world he has embraced. After eventually reaching a pinnacle of success, cultural shifts along with an infusion of drug abuse drag our protagonist down to the point where the same elements stemming from the vice and the surrogate family he joined now work against him until he hits rock bottom. When he hits rock bottom, he has a falling out with his surrogate "father figure" who turns against him for his betrayals and now uncontrollable drug use. All of this nearly kills him - but he still manages to survive rock bottom (unlike some of his friends around him). He is eventually able to pull himself up from rock bottom and settle into a less-than-ideal but by no means awful life, wistfully thinking back on the good times and how they are likely gone forever. Stylistic elements: Wall-to-wall music to help set tone, establish the time setting and occasionally provide an additional commentary on the action itself. Swish-pans, rapid editing sequences to convey frenetic energy, punctuated by extensive dolly and tracking shots to convey more leisurely times of our characters and cover the spaces of the lively nightclubs that they frequent. Title cards placed late in the film in order to subtly tell the viewer that the upcoming scene, times or sequences will be especially significant to the lives of the characters, followed by a shift in editing style to highlight the stresses that the protagonist has gotten himself into - which systematically builds the dramatic tension in the sequence until it results in a conclusive tipping point in his life. Which movie am I describing here? Boogie Nights? Or Goodfellas? Which one came first again? The final scene where our protagonist talks to himself in the mirror and looks back on his experiences is obviously ripped off from Raging Bull rather than Goodfellas, but that is still another Scorsese work.Anderson has nothing to say other than he wants to be thought of as a great director, but he needs to ape the true pioneers that came before him to make that happen. He just needed to make sure he adapted Scorsese's work into the porn world in order to appeal to his adolescent male fan base that eats up anything that helps mainstream their sexual fantasies. Don't fall for the hype. This is an extremely derivative, mediocre work.

Anssi Vartiainen Young Eddie Adams, played by then relatively unknown Mark Wahlberg, is a dishwasher and a all-around dropout, who gets noticed by movie director and invited to shoot films with him. The movies just happen to be of the pornographic nature, which doesn't seem to faze Eddie all that much. He promptly changes his name to Dirk Diggler and the film follows his and his associates' career through the late 70s and early 80s. All the way from the golden age of porn right to the onset of video tape.For a film unabashedly about adult entertainment, the film is surprisingly non-raunchy in nature. Sure it's rated R, but there are very few sex scenes and it's more about the things that happen between the shoots. About the business itself and the kind of people it takes to undress in front of the cameras and do the naughty, as it were. It also has a great style and a lot of talent behind the camera. The soundtrack is well-crafted and contains a pleasingly huge amount of hits from those two decades. The costuming, the camera-work and the colours all harken right back to the 70s and it is one of the better period pieces about the decade I've yet seen.The acting is also superb. This is one of Wahlberg's earliest films and definitely one of the ones that put him on the map as someone with great acting chops. But the real star of the show has to be Burt Reynolds as the director Jack Horner, a man anguishing with the changes in his chosen medium, struggling to have his films seen as something worthwhile, perhaps even art.I'm sure this film has its critics solely because of its subject matter. But if you can get beyond that or if it doesn't bother you in the first place, Boogie Nights is a great film. Superbly crafted, well-acted and with a style of its own.