James Proclaims!

1997’s Boogie Nights is something of a genre-defying tour-de-force. Certainly it defied any expectations I had prior to watching it, and, for a movie that is ostensibly about the pornographic film industry in the late seventies and early eighties, it is surprisingly heart-warming at times.

Indeed it oscillates seamlessly from moments that are hilariously funny, to emphatically bleak, and from poignant melancholy to life-affirming joy, without ever missing a beat.

An early entry in the almost peerless filmography of Paul Thomas Anderson, with excellent performances from an impressive cast, Boogie Nights is never less than entertaining in spite of a hefty running time of two and half hours.

Score for Christmasishness

The timeline of the movie is roughly seven years but it does manage to incorporate a few festive scenes on the way. Notably a New Year’s Eve party, celebrating the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties, which is full of festive merriment until it abruptly ends in a less than cheerful murder/suicide. The latter part of the movie is also quite festive, at least in the background, though again not without a number of harrowing moments. Boogie Nights is definitely not a Christmas movie, but it is certainly a bit Christmas(ish) in parts.