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100Has the quality of many great films, in that it always seems alive.
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88Isn't just an expose of the porn industry -- it's a provocative and involving character study, as well.
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100Mark Wahlberg, in a star-making performance, has the kind of electric ingenuousness that John Travolta did in "Saturday Night Fever."
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70He (Anderson) manages to guide his cast of characters through an epic story of self-delusion with a skill and grace that many more experienced filmmakers would be hard put to match.
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100With Boogie Nights, we know we're not just watching episodes from disparate lives but a panorama of recent social history, rendered in bold, exuberant colors.
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50Heavily influenced by Quentin Tarantino's brand of quirky sensationalism, this high-energy saga by Paul Thomas Anderson goes a long way toward exposing the greed and stupidity of the pornography trade, then loses its moral compass and steers toward a sadly superficial ending.
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80A true storyteller, able to easily mix and match moods in a playful and audacious manner, he (Anderson) is a filmmaker definitely worth watching, both now and in the future.
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80Notwithstanding its occasional grotesque nods to postmodernist convention, this is highly entertaining Hollywood filmmaking, full of spark and vigor.
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89From the second it begins, Boogie Nights seizes your senses and pulls you right in: no turning back, no time for debate, no regrets.
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50It's possible to be dazzled by a movie and still not like it very much.
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100A hard-core movie with a soft, light-hearted center and an edge like a knife.
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100Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has perfectly wedded form to function by filming Boogie Nights in a style suggesting the grainy texture of porn and the ambivalence of the era.
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100While it's very funny, Boogie Nights taps into something much deeper with its on-target depiction of the shifting political and social tides of the '70s and '80s and thoughtful relationships between characters. It's a deeply satisfying movie.
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80So here's a tip for those attending this handsomely acted, epic-length little film. Ease into the sleaze, stare at the party animals, look but don't touch, and, oh, boogie all night. [October 6, 1997]
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100If Boogie Nights were poorly made and acted, its materials would make it intolerably tawdry. But its so well done that we keep watching. [Nov. 10, 1997]
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80The movie's special gift happens to be Mark Wahlberg, who gives a terrifically appealing performance in this tricky role.
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70Moore, who may be the most unpredictably talented actress in movies right now, plays Amber with an inseparable mixture of maternal feeling and lust that's flabbergasting.
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90That rarest of independent films -- it's risky and exciting.
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88A grand, sweeping nostalgia trip that evokes the sickness of an era even as it tries to find its essential humanity.
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90He (Anderson) simply doesn't allow for dull moments, and his gifts for irony and showmanship are clearly appreciated by a collection of actors who have rarely been better.
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70A film so driven by pure style that a script barely seems necessary in its first half, Boogie Nights becomes bogged down in a predictable aftermath of drug deals, post-stardom decay, cocaine-fueled nuttiness, and self-loathing.
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90Darkly comic, vastly entertaining and utterly original.
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100With its ceaseless music, large canvas, shrewd casting and flawless ensemble acting and the dexterity of its whiplashing mood switches, the movie recalls Robert Altman's "Nashville" more than any subsequent movie has.
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88I'm not sure all of this works out as convincingly as Anderson intends in the movie's somewhat unsatisfying ending, but getting there is a wickedly enjoyable journey.
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80A stunning glimpse at acting -- and life -- in the raw.
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It's a deeply divided film--hugely ambitious and uneven, with sequences that seem to point to a new, comically flagrant movie sexuality and others that drag one into the funky muddle of the dreariest dopehead downers from the '70s.
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60These late scenes are over the top, as mean and reductive as editorials in a tabloid, and they nearly extinguish the moral subtlety of what's gone before.
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90As lensed brillantly by 26-year-old Anderson, the movie is at once tasteful and raunchy.