merelyaninnuendo Boogie NightsThe adrenaline rush never wears down even though the feature fluctuates a lot through this more than 150 minutes of journey and this is where it stands alone; the sheer sharp and cunning script of it. Paul Thomas Anderson has its name written all over the frame that is perfectly balanced on this character and plot driven feature where if not for his execution, it would have been difficult to pull off such a powerful script. Mark Wahlberg is brilliant in his portrayal and is supported well enough by a great cast like Julianne Moore, William H. Macy and Heather Graham. Boogie Nights not only has enough content to feed the audience but is celebrated with a great conviction with the help of stellar performances, amazing background score and explicit editing and execution.

tk41 Go away naysayers, move past the porn theme and see this film for what it is. The greatest movie ever! Paul Thomas Anderson captured magic in a bottle. The dialogue, the music, the cinematography all works in sync. I'll take the pool scene over some sled any day. I await your blah, blah , blah. This is a real movie!

heynow-ca I can watch this movie so many times and not get sick of it. One of my faves of all time, great characters and character development.

cbddbc PTA's Magnolia is one of my favorite movies so I naturally watched Boogie Nights after seeing Magnolia. Boogie Nights is a sex-negative morality play that teaches, like a Catholic nun, that sex is bad. PTA doesn't even include a monogamous married couple to portray the many blessings that are rained down upon a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. But you'll quickly see that seems to be one of the takeaways from the conclusion of the film - and the more sexually active the person, the more likely that they will not be able to continue relationships with their biological families.Stereotyping porn actors is just weak. The two youngest, Dirk (Wahlberg) and Rollergirl (Graham) are high school dropouts and not very bright. No one is very bright in the movie with the exception, maybe, of Reynolds' Jack Horner character but even he's out of touch with good taste as he naively calls one of his porn flicks a 'real movie' that will preserve his memory.The first lesson we learn is that a marriage that is not monogamous can only end in murder-suicide. Little Bill (Macy - does the little moniker mean that he has a small organ unlike those in the porn films?) is shamed by his sexually active wife (played by real-life porn star Nina Hartley - a pro-porn defender and long involved with a man and another woman in an alternative relationship) so he naturally murders his wife and her lover and then commits suicide. Because, you know, that's what cuckolds do, right? Little Bill is involved in the porn industry and although Hartley is never seen as an actress in Horner's films, she's a serial adulteress and she gets her just reward.Dirk learns his lesson when he thinks that his success is a result of his smarts as much as his organ size just when his organ is failing him because of drug use. He separates from Horner, taking a couple of his buddies with him but they leave him before he falls upon hard times. Hard times, we're to assume, means being picked up by men who want to watch him handle his organ as they handle their own. We just have to assume this as the only scene that indicates some experience in these matters is a single scene in which he is pummeled by guys in trucks who are just out for a night of gay bashing. Lesson? You might be gifted with a large organ but you'll never be smart.Third and final lesson. This one is tricky - even those who are successful outside of the porn industry (by luck, theft, whatever) have been forever marked by their association and the artificial families that they have created are the only ones that they can depend upon. In the end they are all united under Jack Horner's wing to continue in the porn industry.It's been 20 years since Boogie Nights' release. Pornography on the internet has become almost respectable with the 'amateur' streaming clips being popular and men by the millions having (to me, completely twisted) cuckold fantasies. Twenty years on anyone can be a porn star and hold a PhD in sociology. The aforementioned Nina Hartley began her porn career in 1984 and graduated from nursing school in 1985. In the little research that I've done it simply doesn't seem that the nascent porn film industry was filled with stupid high school drop-outs. Revisiting some of the most successful films of the time you may find more eroticism than in the 10-20 minute videos of today. And you might alternately find that there are very well educated men and women actually enjoying non-monogamous and non-traditional sex.Boogie Nights just doesn't stand up to scrutiny or scholarship. It doesn't even present much in the way of the times when people had public hair.One final note. The cuckold fantasy is one of those 'be careful what you wish for' fantasies. A real woman has fantasies of her own and - surprise! - they may not include you. Your fantasy may be just what she needs to have relations with another guy... as 10 other guys watch. Encourage a woman's lesbian fantasies and she might leave you for another woman. Each person is sexually unique - like a fingerprint - and before becoming involved with anyone in a sexual relationship you need to know a few things up front. Even if the person is fulfilling your sex with a stranger fantasy you need to know a few things. You won't learn much about sex watching Boogie Nights. The only history that you may learn is that when porn came out of the film theaters and onto home video, there was an explosion in sales and proliferation in product. Did the transition mean less artistic products? I don't think so... not every film of the time was a 'Behind the Green Door.'