Boogie Nights (1997)

Burt Reynolds best movie. He should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

But 1998 Oscars was a tough year:

Burt Reynolds for Boogie Nights

Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting

Anthony Hopkins for Amistad

Robert Forster for Jackie Brown

Greg Kinnear for As Good as It Gets

Really depressing movie. The bifurcated structure of the film was masterfully accomplished and the point of view that the '70s was awesome and the '80s awful is something I support.

I love this film. My skin was crawling during the scene when they go to the drug dealer’s house and he’s waving the gun around.

Over the course of the movie the girls with the Colonel get younger and younger.

[quote]Burt Reynolds best movie. He should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

It was Reynolds' best performance, but the right actor won that year (Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting).

[quote]I love this film. My skin was crawling during the scene when they go to the drug dealer’s house and he’s waving the gun around.

I'd never felt such a sense of dread and tension as I felt during that scene -- I was literally shaking as I watched it in the theater. It was probably the loud music and the random firecrackers going off. A really well-directed scene.

A perfect movie from opening credits to the very end. Not a bad note anywhere. I'm sure lots of it was bits and pieces of true stories from over the years, patched together by PTA. Do fans think this is his best? I do.

Hard call. I love both Phantom Thread and The Master, in addition to Boogie Nights. But this film felt like he had the most fun making it, of all his work - there is a joy in the details of it that I don’t see in any of his other films except maybe Licorice Pizza, which was forgettable.

If what you think about Mark Wahlberg being a total piece of shit asshole... times that by 1,000 and you'll be correct. Truly awful human being.

Wasn't it loosely based on John Holmes? I went out with this guy who dragged me to a swing party in the Hollywood hills in the 70s. It was an a-frame on Sunset Plaza Drive. John holmes was there with someone and everyone egged him on to show them his dick. It had to be the ugliest dick I have ever seen. It was all wrinkled. It looked like it was a foot long. He said it never really got hard. Only half hard.

R5 Robert Ridgley was a really good actor. He was the hangman in Blazing Saddles, the mayor in Beverly Hills Cop, one of the evil law partners in Philadelphia, the rich neighbor in The Ref, and The Colonel in Boogie Nights (his last film).

I don't know who The Colonel was based on, but Ridgley gave a great performance as a "sophisticated" pedophile.

All that glitters is not gash.

One of my favorite movies. Hard to pick a favorite performer in this film, or a favorite scene. Probably the first pool party. This movie FELT like the 70s really felt if that makes sense

PTA casting Walberg ruined the whole movie and yes it was his own ugly penis. The movie was also over long and lost focus. A problem with most of PTA's work.

I hate Mark Wahlberg, but this movie is so good I don't even mind. But, who would have made a better Dirk Diggler, what actor in his early to mid-20s could play that part?

First choice for Dirk was Leonardo; I actually think Mark was perfect in this role, despite his assholery

Jerry O'Connel or Matthew Mcgonawhatever or the Irish guy from Roseanne who OD'd anyone but Wahlberg

Any guy from Dazed and Confused

Wahlberg is just a mess of nothing in the film. And his voice is so weak.

I agree, Walberg can't act and he brought nothing to the lead role he had and the whole movie fell flat because of that. Very bad casting choice by PTA.

Julianne Moore was really good in this, too.

Great soundtrack

It was funny how Marky Mark played "bad actor" during his porno movie scenes, but it was barely any different from his movie, movie scenes.

I thought Mark did fine in the movie

Are you on the spectrum r25?

Even though I avoid films with Mark Wahlberg, Boogie Nights is one of.my all-times. Wahlberg's appeal to anyone escapes me. He's as humorless & texture-free as Tom Cruise. Wahlberg is definitely the runt of this cast & there's no redeeming himself here. Otherwise, however, this film even makes Heather Graham come across as a capable actress. The mood Boogie Nights sets in each era it portrays is spot-on, precisely evocative of the nuances of those times. Love it!

To me the best sequence of the movie is when Rollergirl films with her old highschool friend in the limo while Burt Reynolds’s hosts/cut with Mark getting violently attacked/cut with rollergirl having her meltdown. The music is simple but effective.

Mark Wahlberg is good in this and The Departed. That's it.

I thought his sub-par acting lent itself to the bumbling naïveté of his character. Marky Mark was perfect in this.

PTA's best movie. I also loved Licorice Pizza because it went back to this time period and place he so clearly adores, the 1970s San Fernando Valley.

[quote]Mark Wahlberg is good in this and The Departed. That's it.

I remember when Boogie Nights came out, there was a blind item posted on alt.showbiz.gossip about an up-and-coming star owing all the critical acclaim he was getting to the editor who managed to piece together a decent performance. The consensus was that the BI was Marky Mark.

I watched the film last night.

I think the best scene in the entire film is at the jail when The Colonel gets arrested. Robert Ridgely and Burt Reynolds give damn good verbal and nonverbal performances.

Watched it tonight. Love Andrew Gold.

[quote]PTA casting Walberg ruined the whole movie and yes it was his own ugly penis.

Absolutely not. It was widely reported at the time that it was a prosthetic, and it looks like a prosthetic (although well done). I think Wahlberg's acting in this movie is excellent, and it's idotic to state that a good performanc by an film actor can be "pieced together" by an editor.

P.S. Of all the heartbreaking and disturbing scenes in the film, I think the saddest is the one where Julianne Moore's character, Amber, is attempting to defend herself in a child custody case, fails miserably, and ends up sobbing alone in an otherwise empty room. Oh, and you know who else is great in this movie? Joanna Gleason. And, of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

It's all solid performances, from start to finish.

The great Phillip Baker Hall as Floyd "butter in my ass" Gondolli is another gem.

And Alfred Molina as Rahad! They were all nominated for SAG's Best Performance by a Cast Award, but lost to The Full Monty.

I’m not going to pay good money just to watch a movie about a man who spends his evenings PICKING HIS NOSE!

[quote] and The Colonel in Boogie Nights (his last film).

And how proud he must have been in his final moments, knowing his final role was as a child rapist.

R29, Id like to add I Heart Huckabee's.

That’s Cosmo. He’s Chinese.

I love the film. It's absolutely about the setting up of mood in each scene and masterfully, I would say. (Magnolia and There Will Be Blood are successful too for that reason, and in one case for 9vercoming odd casting choices).

Mark Wahlberg who makes my flesh creep is fitting in the role, the only time I would give him that much. Accidentally, maybe, in that it was not from any skill of the actor, but it worked.

So many scenes stand out as mini-films in themselves, but always part of a whole, building, building...

It was a great movie but it felt creepy watching it. Like to was almost too well done and you felt like you were watching a documentary instead of a fictional movie. I had a hard time after seeing Julianne Moore in things without thinking about her being a sad coke-head porn star who lost custody of her kids. It was almost too real. And everyone (even Heather Graham!) was excellent in it.