Boogie Nights Paul Thomas Anderson 1997 US (1st time; VHS) The rise and fall of the pornography industry and the lives of the people therein, just as video is taking over film, at the end of the 70s. Anderson's style is to give otherwise discardable characters an emotional undercurrent with well-timed asides amidst the stylistic flourishes and pounding soundtrack of the narrative; it runs out of steam after ninety minutes or so, but keeps going with some powerful, if irrelevant, scenes of violence. Its confidence and ambition must be praised, and there are few films which pull off the juxtaposition between disturbing and comedic with such panache. But for a film which shows much early promise in its multi-layered depiction of a film industry (with films-within-films-within-films), the characterisation ends up being rather ordinary.
...dot com bold typeface rhetoric. You go clickety click and get your head split. 'The hell you look like on a message board Discussing whether or not the Brother is hardcore?
