Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not one of the best movies of all time
Review: I don't know why I saw this movie in the first place, I thought it would be some shallow sub-mediocre film. However, it nicely portrayed the porn industry in its "prime". It forces the viewer to form a new mental image of the porn industry by giving the fates of several stars. Dirk, the king of the scene, ends up in ruins; the others also have a difficult time after giving up filmmaking. Many complain that the movie is too long and has some irrelevant parts. However, if these scenes were removed, the film would not have the same impact. I wouldn't say this is a classic, but it is better than most movies out there, especially nowadays.
Rating: 
Summary: Tour de force
Review: An incredible movie. Most who view this movie see it as an escape to the carefree 70's lifetyle and nothing more. It is more than that. You'll see a side of society that exists behind the walls of the moral majority. What's ironic is that this underground porn society is drawn together by a society that doesn't accept them. These outcasts seek the comfort of others like themselves. Dirk Diggler is such a person. This movie plots Dirks journey and eventual arrival into the fold of his new found family. That the patriach (Burt Reynolds) of this family is a porn director is of no consequence. That its members are porn actors is not the issue. What is important is that Dirk finally finds what we all wish for - family and friends that will stand behind you. It's a pity that they have to go through hell to find that in the end that is all that matters. One thing is for sure - I wish I had a friend like Reed Rothchild.
Rating: 
Summary: it had promise...
Review: ...if only the story didn't fall apart in 100 different directions after a tight first hour. It started cohesively enough, but then it started rambling on and on until the end when Wahlberg talked to his privates.5 stars for the first hour, one star for everything after.
Rating:
Summary: Never expected to like this film, but....
Review: What a surprise. I never thought that I could feel any empathy, sympathy or heartbreak about characters who are porn stars...but surprise, surprise. This movie is a WINNER! The acting is great, the writing hilarious, the direction perfect. This movie draws you in, makes you interested and care about the people. The music is very well placed. Couldn't stop laughing when they played "I believe in miracles..where ya from, you sexy thing", when dumpy porno assistant/lakey Scotty first spots handsome and naive Dirk Diggler. I'm looking forward to the directors next release.
Rating: 
Summary: A Thouroughly Unpleasant Film
Review: One of th most thouroughly unpleasant films I have ever seen. An extremely poor production.
Rating:
Summary: Sheer boredom
Review: Badly written, badly directed, well acted, well made. It cannot conceal the fact that it has absolutely nothing to say. It simply mills around for about an hour, and then decides to throw some graphic violence on the screen as a last-ditch effort for some kind of Artistic Significance. Avoid this film. It is utterly without any kind of value whatever.
Rating:
Summary: Scorsese Does it Better
Review: I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I was sooo disapointed. I mean, it was OK. You can't go that far wrong with a movie about the porn industry that takes place in the 70's. But I guess I've seen "Goodfellas" so many times that it was too easy to tell all the scenes and shots that were ripped off from it. Not just Goodfellas, either...my main complaint about the movie, in fact, was how shamelessly it ripped off other movies. The opening tracking shot is taken from "A Touch of Evil", the shootout in the donut shop is taken from "Reservoir Dogs", the scene where Dirk comes back and apologizes to Horner is right out of Goodfellas, and the last scene is right out of "Raging Bull". This is all just stuff that came off the top of my head, I'm sure I could come up with a lengthy list. OK, now up to a point, this is fine. But this was just insulting to my intelligence after awhile, and even being kind and deciding the last scene was purposely taken from "Raging Bull" for humorous effect, the rest is just old. This movie is probably worth seeing once, as it does have its good points--William Macy and Don Cheadle's performances are brilliant as usual, the 70's period detail is pretty good, and there's some pretty amusing dialogue at times. My favorite scenes were the ones that were clips from the porno movies, such as the hilarious credits from the Brock Landers movie (the audience in the theater when I saw this opening weekend was laughing so hard you couldn't hear anything for a few minutes). Those are funny enough to be worth the price of a rental. But after I read all the reviews raving about this movie, I expected better, at least something more original and imaginative. Mostly, however, it just made me want to watch Goodfellas again for the 57th time.
Rating:
Summary: Best film of 1997
Review: The Year of the Big Boat Movie also brought us something else: this funny, dark, perceptive movie about the porn industry, and what happens when the idustry standard switches from film to tape. Over the course of 2 and1/2 hours, PT Anderson uses his sordid surroundings and its characters to make some interesting commentary on our fame-obsessed, sexually maladusted, delusional society.The film begins in the seventies, when porn was shot on film and shown in theaters. Because their images were shot through light onto a screen in a public place, the actors and directors had something in common with mainstream filmmakers, and felt they could label themselves as such. When the introduction of home video came about in the early eighties, all of the trappings and illusions of stardom went by the wayside. People no longer consumed adult entertainment in public, and the convienience of the fast-forward button eliminated such luxuries as characters, and plots. The saddest moments in this film comes when each main character discovers the sad truth about him or herself.Which brings me to what I feel the central theme of the film to be. I think the movie is really all about self-esteem. As we learn about our characters, it is revealed that each is damaged in very specific ways. Dirk comes from a home where his mother is brutal and abusive, his father innefectual. Amber escapes from her husband into a world of empty sex and drugs, and was even willing to abandon her son. We can only guess what life with her husband must have been like. When we meen him during a custody hearing, his looks and demeanor suggest someone hard and unforgiving. We see Rollergirl being objectified and humiliated by the boys in her homeroom. All of them are in great amounts of pain that lead them to degrading behavior. These tendencies are only encouraged because doing so makes them money and supports the illusion they are movie stars. This behavior becomes a catalyst in a never-ending downward spiral of drugs, narcicism and self delusion. Some characters, when faced with the relaity of their lives, leave the biz.Others accept that they are pornographers instead of filmmakers, and get on with the business of making pornography, resigned to knowing it's all they know how to do. Some, like Dirk, retreat not into the names they have given themselves, but into the characters those characters portray in thier films (note that in the final shot, Eddie, or"Dirk" refers to himself as "Brock Landers", a character "Dirk" who is really Eddie created for a series of films). It is especially interesting to point out that when Dirk says "I'm a star", the camera is not pointed at his face, but at a region about two and a half feet to the south. Eddie is not Dirk, his member is.The film is populated with characters who are funny on screen but who would be pathetic in real life. Everyone has an angle or gimmick, such as Rollergirl, who never takes her skates off for any reason, or Buck Swope, a porn stud as know-know-it-all fashion accident. Most comicially saddening of all is Scotty, the stringy-haired, overwheight production assistant who has the singular misfortune to be gay in an industry that celebrates inflated, cartoonish notions of masculinity.One or two scenes aside, it's surprising how little actual onscreen sex resides in this film. There is Dirk and Amber's first time on camera together, but this scene functions to show how a typical porn shoot is conducted. It is interesting mainly for what goes on before the shoot, and for what happens when the cameraman must change film magazines mid scene. When the camera runs out of film, the panting stops as if someone had flicked a mute switch. When the camerman gives the go sign, it starts up again, right where it had left off. We are given an impression of people who perform sex as a job for the benefit of lonely men who never have it for pleasure.This is a wonderful film that has been mismarketed and misrepresented by many people who have never seen it, or are too uptight to grasp its timely, disturbing message. A truly landmark film.
Rating:
Summary: Overrated, though still fascinating as a whole.
Review: The critics who put this movie in a "Best-of-all-time" list probably got seduced by all the patchwork trends of the '90s. Boogie Nights is an interesting, occasionally sloppy, generally sympathetic movie with distinct flaws. Though these flaws don't destroy the whole, it is nowhere close to being a classic of Citizen Kane proportions, though stylistically it reflects (and, I would argue, is symptomatic of) the '90s style of postmodern filmmaking. Like most '90s films and especially indies, this movie suffers from too quirky a narrative flow and show-offy techniques. Its most grievous problem is a generic one -- writer/director P.T. Anderson, by trying to evoke too many movies that he seems to love (or, in the worst-case scenario, by trying to dog after the Tarantino approach to filmmaking), creates tonal conflicts in his movie that don't fit the story at all. For example, to chronicle Dirk Diggler's decline, he stages a ridiculous drug-dealing sequence complete with John Woo-style double-pistol action. Compared with the gentle and moving account of the Don Cheadle character's decline (unable to get a bank loan because he was a porn star), this sequence is garbage indeed. (I'm as big a fan of John Woo as anybody, but there are times to use the Woo imagery and techniques, and this wasn't one of them.) The actors are great to watch, of course -- when you get Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, William H. Macy, Don Cheadle, Burt Reynolds...and a well cast Mark Wahlberg in a movie, it'd take a lot to spoil the characterization, and Anderson, for all his faults, isn't quite that atrocious to ruin it for his actors. So in the end Boogie Nights is an overlong though sharply observed comment on pornography and growing up in the '70s. Defiantly unusual -- and like many other films that dare to take risks, it stumbles. They're noble failures, however. Once Anderson reconciles his sense of adventure in filmmaking with coherence of tone and narrative flow, he'll achieve a true dialogue with his Muse. On Boogie Nights, he's shouting to be heard.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific ensemble acting!!!
Review: We all know that Burt Reynolds, Juliane Moore and Mark Wahlberg turned in excellent performances in this film. However, kudos are also richly deserved for the outstanding perfomraces of Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, Bill Macey, the always excellent Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Alfred Molina. Moreover, director Anderson's use of music is phenomenal - the soundtrack does not just set up retro 70s/80s hits, but ties in the the specific mood and action of the film and characters themselves. A brilliant film that gets better with repeated watching!
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