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Reviews:
I
like the night
life…: Boogie
Nights
by Christian De Matteo
Super
Recently
I got an incredible deal in the mail
from Columbia House where I could get
four DVDs for 49 cents if I sold my soul
and/or first born to them in the next
two years.
I figured, for DVDs? What the hell,
pun intended.
Being a shrewd DVD buyer I then
blew my four 49 cent’ers on DVDs that
would normally cost me upwards of $30.
One of the first I went for was
the incredible New Line Platinum Series Boogie
Nights.
Boogie
Nights was one of those movies Mark
made me see. I had assumed it was just an excuse to make porno mainstream
and as such had avoided it like the
plague.
(Those of you coughing B.S.
can quit it, ‘cause I’m serious…
no really!)
But Mark promised me pizza and
the deal was done.
The
film is incredible.
Much like writer/director P.T.
Anderson’s follow-up film, Magnolia,
Boogie
Nights deals with deep human issues,
intense characters and extreme
situations. Anderson’s script goes from laugh-out-loud hysterics to
moments that you the viewer will doubt
you can survive.
These moments are intense,
emotional moments where you can’t help
but feel total empathy for a character
you would never imagine you could
identify with.
How does this happen?
Because Anderson rips the core of
humanity from the very center of his
characters and paints them with its
drippings.
Mark Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler
character could be the suburban kid
turned porn god, or just that kid you
knew in high school, with all the
intensity of self discovery and loss
that either of those people could have.
Even as Anderson makes sure the
debauchery goes from “good, clean
fun” (right)
to outright depravity so do the
viewer’s emotions skyrocket and
plummet like a runaway firecracker that
doesn’t detonate for a long, long
time.
Is
the film long?
I don’t think Anderson can make
a short film!
It’s about three hours but the
three hours don’t faze you since he
yanks you into the film and make you
feel more like you’ve lived the decade
and the decadence. Anderson challenges the viewer to get close to the
characters, understand them, have fun
with them, enjoy their party life, the
dream of all sex and all money with none
of the problems that are usually
inseparable from sex and money… until
you reach that P.T. Anderson half point
when, to quote the great band Everclear,
“it all goes wrong again.”
Now you find yourself hopelessly
entangled in lives you would never
associate with if you’d had your
druthers, forced into feeling for them
as the they slip and slide down the
spiral toward utter oblivion and certain
doom.
The
1980’s ring in with a gunshot and a
warning just short of using Dante’s
warning sign before the gates of Hell:
“Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter
Here.”
And yet we step through dutifully
because it would be impossible to
abandon our new, mislead friends now.
Could anyone truly ever leave the
beautiful and talented Julianne Moore to
fend for herself, the chameleon Phillip
Seymour Hoffman for fight painfully on
his own?
Which
brings us to the cast.
What can one say? William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, Mark Wahlberg, Philip
Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Don
Cheadle, Burt Reynolds, Heather Graham,
Alfred Molina, Luz Guzman and more and
more and more.
No one does a bad moment, has a
bad scene, a bad second in this film.
All of it is played with such
heart that it’s easy to forget it’s
a film.
Boogie
Nights does not pack the total
wallop that Magnolia does, but it comes so damn close that it can bite its
heals, sniff its toes and deliver the
money shot on its calves.
Funny, clever, entertaining and
positively gut wrenching, this porn
world Raging
Bull is way, way up there on my all
time movie list and is a shoe in as an
entertaining watch… no matter what
reason you watch it.
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