Revisiting BOOGIE NIGHTS in 4K

BOOGIE NIGHTS (4K UHD)

1997 / 155 min

Warner Bros

#InPartnershipwithWB

Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Boinker😽

Everything I know about the porn industry I learned from movies and TV, and until Boogie Nights came along, it was almost always depicted as a profession populated by bottom dwellers…junkies, perverts, mobsters and performers driven by desperation. Pornography represented the dark, icky side of humanity.

Not that writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson paints it as sunshine and lollipops, but nearly 30 years after the film established him as a creative force to be reckoned with, it remains the only one I know of that humanizes those who choose porn for a living, on both sides of the camera. So while sex, drugs and rock & roll are still here in abundance, Boogie Nights never feels exploitative. If anything, it’s more of a love letter to a bygone era, when disco was king, collars were wide, and most significantly, dirty movies had plots and played in theaters.

"Hey! My pecs are down here!"

I know a lot of people who love Boogie Nights, including some who find the subject matter itself repellant, and others who feel Anderson has yet to top it. I’ve never been quite as enamored with the film (or the director in general), feeling it was too long, with a narrative that was mostly only engaging once things started going south for these characters. Still, there’s a lot to appreciate here…the performances, the killer soundtrack, impressive technical aspects (love all those lengthy tracking shots, especially the opening one) and an overall aesthetic that immerses us in another time as effectively Quentin Tarantino would do two decades later with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Is Boogie Nights an accurate depiction of the porn business in the '70s? Don’t know, don’t care. What matters is that it feels authentic and is always visually interesting. Speaking of which, the film looks and sounds really good in 4K. Having never seen it on Blu-ray, I’ve got no basis for comparison, but I was impressed that it kind-of had the overall texture of a projected film. Soundwise, the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track does the job quite nicely. This disc also includes an all-new bonus feature - a couple of lengthy panel discussions featuring Anderson - along with a batch of older stuff carried over from the 2010 Blu-ray release.

EXTRA KIBBLES

AMERICAN CINEMATEQUE PANEL Nights 1 & 2 - Running nearly an hour in total, these were filmed during a screening celebrating Warner Bros’ 100th Anniversary. The first night features writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson & actor John C. Reilly, The second features just Anderson.

2 AUDIO COMMENTARIES - 1) By writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson; 2) By actors Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, Luis Guzman, William H. Macy, Juliane\ne Moore, John C. Reilly, Mark Wahlberg and Meloria Walters.

10 DELETED SCENES

MUSIC VIDEO - “Try,” by Michael Penn.

THE JOHN C. REILLY FILES - Outtakes/extended scenes primarily featuring…guess who?

DIGITAL COPY