Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, a swaggering rise-and-fall epic in which confidence, excess and found family collide, turns the porn boom into a sour take on the American Dream.

  • Director

    Paul Thomas Anderson

  • With

    Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle

  • USA 1997. 156min

  • Digital 4K

  • Certificate

    18

  • A Park Circus Re-release

Anderson’s electrifying breakout plunges us into the San Fernando Valley porn industry at the moment it believed itself immortal. Discovered while bussing tables, Wahlberg’s Eddie Adams is reborn as Dirk Diggler, a star whose rise mirrors the confidence, camaraderie and cocaine-fuelled excess of the late 1970s. Under the paternal guidance of Reynolds’ idealistic director, Dirk enters a surrogate family of performers and misfits, where success feels communal and limitless. But as the industry shifts gear as it enters the 1980s, ego, addiction and exploitation fracture those bonds. Propelled by restless camerawork, bravura set pieces and a phenomenal ensemble, Boogie Nights is at once euphoric and devastating – a chronicle of ambition, performance and the cost of believing fame can replace belonging.

Rógan Graham, Film Programmer

Contains drug abuse, male nudity and violence.