2012--The Year in Review

Rarely can I remember a film falling so swiftly from grace as did Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. Met with excited anticipation and confused raves upon its October release, but abandoned with utter contempt only a month later, Paul Thomas Anderson's superb character study left many viewers wondering "What went wrong?" But why?! The picture's quality and intent was crystal clear. Joaquin Phoenix delivered the performance of the year--I mean, James Dean-level brilliance--as Freddie Quell, a twisted, horndog, alcoholic war veteran who parlays his mastery of photography and chemistry into a friendship with Lancaster Dodd, a megalomaniacal cult leader played with equal grandeur by Philip Seymour Hoffman. This film seemed so simple: it was about the battle for Freddie's soul, and this is something Freddie is not going to give up so easily. What was wonderfully complex about The Master was that Lancaster Dodd's questionable brainwashing methods actually DO help Quell come to some sobering conclusions about himself. But this doesn't mean Quell owes Dodd his LIFE! (And this is where the film's main criticism of Scientology lies.) It remains, though, that The Master has profound feelings for both of its main characters (and deep suspicions about its most villainous presence, in the unlikely, chilly embodiment of Amy Adams as Dodd's imperious wife). It has great respect for Lancaster and Freddie's friendship, but it also knows that Freddie has other fish to fry, and it generously let's him go about doing so (this is underlined in the film's gloriously carnal final scene). With another earth-rocking score from Jonny Greenwood and astounding 70mm photography from Mihai Malaimaire Jr. (I swear, I gasped when those reproductions of Freddie's '40s-era photographic set-ups flashed onto the big screen), The Master left my body and soul buzzing after seeing it, as if I'd imbibed some of Freddie's intoxicating jet fuel. It was clearly the best film of the period, and glaringly worthy of the sweep I give it (and certainly better than the still entertaining Oscar winner Argo). 

Still, 2012 was a terrific year for international cinema, with Michael Haneke's end-of-life love story Amour; Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho's riveting tale of a high-rise bedeviled by crime Neighboring Sounds; the little seen truck-stop romance Araf/Somewhere in Between, from Turkey's Yesim Ustaoglu; the terrific political film No, shot on '80s-era videotape by Spain's Pablo Larrain; the stunningly idiosyncratic Holy Motors, from French auteur Leos Carax (and starring the remarkable Denis Levant); the often over-the-top, time-hopping, makeup-caked international production Cloud Atlas; and especially the deeply moving musical documentary Searching for Sugar Man by Sweden's Malik Bendjelloul (who, sadly, committed suicide only a year after winning the Oscar). As for the Americans, I was dazzled by Craig Zobel's account of a real-life hoax perpetrated against the workers at a fast food joint. Compliance was easily the most unfairly overlooked film of the year, with an ensemble cast that miraculously make you see how something this astoundingly wrong can happen with ease (it's Ann Dowd, in the nominal lead as the restaurant's confused manager, who really grabs us by the throat--it's arguable, the notion that hers is a supporting performance rather than a lead, but I'm siding with the latter, since she's the first and last major character we see on screen). It and Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's tense account of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, landed along with P.T. Anderson's movie as the best American products of the year, though I loved Behn Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, Don Hertzfeldt's mindbending animated feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day, Steven Spielberg's regal Lincoln, Hamony Korine's wild ride Spring Breakers, Richard Linklater's underappreciated Bernie, David O. Russell's hit romance Silver Linings Playbook, and Steven Soderburgh's utterly fun Magic Mike. All in all, an encouraging year for film. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are only occasionally reflective of the selections made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars). When available, the nominee that actually won the Oscar will be highlighted in bold.

PICTURE: THE MASTER (US, Paul Thomas Anderson) (2nd: Searching for Sugar Man (Sweden/UK, Malik Bendjelloul), followed by: Amour (France, Michael Haneke); Zero Dark Thirty (US, Kathryn Bigelow); Compliance (US, Craig Zobel); Neighboring Sounds (Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho); Araf/Somewhere in Between (Turkey, Yesim Ustaoglu); No (Spain, Pablo Larrain); Frances Ha (US, Noah Baumbach); Holy Motors (France, Leos Carax); Cloud Atlas (US/Germany/Hong Kong, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lara Wachowski); Beasts of the Southern Wild (US, Benh Zeitlin); It’s Such a Beautiful Day (US, Don Hertzfeldt); Lincoln (US, Steven Spielberg); Spring Breakers (US, Harmony Korine); Bernie (US, Richard Linklater); Silver Linings Playbook (US, David O. Russell); Magic Mike (US, Steven Soderburgh); Wreck-It Ralph (US, Rich Moore); What Maisie Knew (US, Scott McGehee and David Siegel); A Hijacking (Denmark, Tobias Lindholm); Haywire (US, Steven Soderburgh); Hope Springs (US, David Frankel); The Cabin in the Woods (US, Drew Goddard); Killing Them Softly (US, Andrew Dominik); The Sessions (US, Ben Lewin); Django Unchained (US, Quentin Tarantino); Passion (US, Brian De Palma); Your Sister’s Sister (US, Lynn Shelton); Skyfall (US/UK, Sam Mendes); The Act of Killing (Denmark/Norway, Joshua Oppenheimer); Player Hating: A Love Story (US, Maggie Hadleigh-West); After Lucia (Mexico/France, Michel Franco); Frankenweenie (US, Tim Burton); Anna Karenina (UK, Joe Wright); This is 40 (US, Judd Apatow); Detropia (US, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady); The Avengers (US, Joss Whedon); Jeff Who Lives at Home (US, Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass); West of Memphis (US, Amy Berg); Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Col. Bruce Hampton (US, Tom Lawson and Michael Koepenick); Argo (US, Ben Affleck); Return (US, Liza Johnson); How to Survive a Plague (US, David France); Flight (US, Robert Zemeckis); The Dark Knight Rises (US, Christopher Nolan); You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (France, Alain Resnais); Life of Pi (US, Ang Lee); Street Dogs of South Central (US, Bill Marin); The Queen of Versailles (US, Lauren Greenfield); Le Capital (France, Costa-Gavras); The Hunt (Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg); Stories We Tell (Canada, Sarah Polley); Liv and Ingmar (Norway/Sweden, Dheeraj Akolkar); Paul Williams Still Alive (US, Stephen Kessler); Celeste and Jesse Forever (US, Lee Toland Kreiger); The Place Beyond the Pines (US, Derek Cianfrance); To the Wonder (US, Terrence Malick); Arbitrage (US, Nicholas Jarecki); Pitch Perfect (US, Jason Moore); The Guilt Trip (US, Anne Fletcher); Rock of Ages (US, Adam Shankman); 21 Jump Street (US, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller); Musical Chairs (US, Susan Seidelman); A Late Quartet (US, Yaron Zilberman); Trash Dance (US, Andrew Garrison); The Perks of Being a Wallflower (US, Stephen Chbosky); The Giant Mechanical Man (US, Lee Kirk); Whore’s Glory (Germany/Austria, Michael Glawogger); Stand Up Guys (US, Fisher Stevens); Hitchcock (US, Sasha Gervasi); Brave (US, Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell); Les Miserables (US/UK, Tom Hooper); The Pirates: Band of Misfits (UK, Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt); The Impossible (US/Spain, J.A. Bayona); On the Road (US/UK, Walter Salles); Moonrise Kingdom (US, Wes Anderson); Barbara (Germany, Christian Petzold); The Hunger Games (US, Gary Ross); The Imposter (UK, Bart Layton); Cosmopolis (US, David Cronenberg); Looper (US, Rian Johnson); The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (US/New Zealand, Peter Jackson); Prometheus (US, Ridley Scott))



ACTOR: Joaquin Phoenix, THE MASTER (2nd: Denis Levant, Holy Motors, followed by: Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln; Jack Black, Bernie; Denzel Washington, Flight; Jean-Louis Tritignant, Amour; Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook; John Hawkes, The Sessions)



ACTRESS: Ann Dowd, COMPLIANCE (2nd: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour, followed by: Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha; Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty; Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook; Qu’venzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Meryl Streep, Hope Springs; Onata Aprile, What Maisie Knew)



SUPPORTING ACTOR: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, THE MASTER (2nd: Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike, followed by: James Franco, Spring Breakers; Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained; Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook; Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained; Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams, THE MASTER (2nd: Helen Hunt, The Sessions, followed by: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables; Mickey Sumner, Frances Ha; Sally Field, Lincoln; Dreama Walker, Compliance; Doona Bae, Cloud Atlas; Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises)

DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, THE MASTER (2nd: Malik Bendjelloul, Searching for Sugar Man, followed by: Michael Haneke, Amour; Pablo Larrain, No; Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty; Craig Zobel, Compliance; Leos Carax, Holy Motors; Yasim Ustaoglu, Araf/Somewhere in Between)



NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM: AMOUR (France, Michael Haneke) (2nd: Neighboring Sounds (Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho), followed by: Araf/Somewhere in Between (Turkey, Yesim Ustaoglu); No (Spain, Pablo Larrain); Holy Motors (France, Leos Carax);  A Hijacking (Denmark, Tobias Lindholm); After Lucia (Mexico/France, Michel Franco); You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (France, Alain Resnais); Le Capital (France, Costa-Gavras); The Hunt (Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg); Barbara (Germany, Christian Petzold))



DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN (Sweden/UK, Malik Bendjelloul) (2nd: The Act of Killing (Denmark/Norway, Joshua Oppenheimer), followed by: Player Hating: A Love Story (US, Maggie Hadleigh-West); Detropia (US, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady); West of Memphis (US, Amy Berg); Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Col. Bruce Hampton (US, Tom Lawson and Michael Koepenick); How to Survive a Plague (US, David France); Street Dogs of South Central (US, Bill Marin); The Queen of Versailles (US, Lauren Greenfield); Stories We Tell (Canada, Sarah Polley); Liv and Ingmar (Norway/Sweden, Dheeraj Akolkar); Paul Williams Still Alive (US, Stephen Kessler); Trash Dance (US, Andrew Garrison); Whore’s Glory (Germany/Austria, Michael Glawogger))



ANIMATED FEATURE: IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (US, Don Hertzfeldt) (2nd: Wreck-It Ralph (US, Rich Moore), followed by: Frankenweenie (US, Tim Burton); The Pirates: Band of Misfits (UK, Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt); Brave (US, Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell))



ANIMATED SHORT: FRESH GUACAMOLE (US, Adam Pesapane) (2nd: Adam and Dog (US, Minkyu Lee), followed by: Requiem for Romance (Canada, Jonathan Ng); Paperman (US, John Kahrs); Feral (Canada, Daniel Sousa))



LIVE ACTION SHORT: IK BEN ECHT NIET BANG! (I’M NEVER AFRAID) (Netherlands, Willem Baptist), (2nd: Curfew (US, Shawn Christensen), followed by: Last Words of the Holy Ghost (US, Ben Sharony); Buzkashi Boys (US/Afghanistan, Sam French); Patti (US, Haley Webb))



ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Paul Thomas Anderson, THE MASTER (2nd: Craig Zobel, Compliance, followed by: Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty; Michael Haneke, Amour; Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Frances Ha)



ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:  Pedro Peirano, NO (2nd: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook, followed by: Richard Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth, Bernie; Lucy Alibar and Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Chris Terrio, Argo)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mihai Malaimaire Jr., THE MASTER (2nd: Roger Deakins, Skyfall, followed by: Benoit Debie, Spring Breakers; Frank Gribe and John Toll, Cloud Atlas; Grieg Fraser, Zero Dark Thirty)

ART DIRECTION: ANNA KARININA, Lincoln, Cloud Atlas, Moonrise Kingdom, Skyfall

COSTUME DESIGN: ANNA KARININA, Moonrise Kingdom, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, Lincoln 



FILM EDITING: ZERO DARK THIRTY, The Master, Searching for Sugar Man, Skyfall, Haywire 

SOUND: ZERO DARK THIRTY, Skyfall, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Lincoln

SOUND EFFECTS: ZERO DARK THIRTY, Skyfall (tied at the Oscars), The Avengers 



ORIGINAL SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, THE MASTER (2nd: Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas, followed by: Cliff Martinez, Spring Breakers; Dan Roman and Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Dario Marinelli, Anna Karinina)



ORIGINAL SONG: “Looking for a Sign” from JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME (Music and lyrics by Beck Hansen) (2nd: “Metaphorical Blanket” from Any Day Now (Music and lyrics by Rufus Wainwright), followed by: “Who Were We?” from Holy Motors (Music by Neil Hannon, lyrics by Leos Carax and Neil Hannon); “Skyfall” from Skyfall (Music and lyrics by Adele and Paul Epworth); “Who Did That To You? from Django Unchained (Music and lyrics by John Legend); “Before My Time” from Chasing Ice (Music and lyrics by J. Ralph); "Dull Tool" from This is 40 (Music and lyrics by Fiona Apple); "Wide Awake" from Katy Perry: Part of Me (Music and lyrics by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Bonnie McKee, Maz Martin and Henry Walter); "Anything Made of Paper" from West of Memphis (Music and lyrics by Bill Carter and Ruth Ellsworth); "Still Alive" from Paul Williams Still Alive (Music and lyrics by Paul Williams))

SPECIAL EFFECTS: LIFE OF PI, Cloud Atlas, The Avengers

MAKEUP: CLOUD ATLAS, Holy Motors, Lincoln

In Memorium: Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)

Blue-eyed and blonde-haired, yet often rumpled and unshaven, with a big body and a gentle soul, Philip Seymour Hoffman was committed to every role he assayed, regardless of its effect on his image. Adamantly devout to characters that were flawed, enraged or, indeed, near nervous collapse, Hoffman's death, on February 2nd, 2014 of a heroin overdose, has left a massive hole in the art world--one that can never be filled in quite the same way again.

A New York University alumni, in the early 90s Hoffman made the transition from an acclaimed stage star to tiny but impactful supporting roles in films like My New Gun, Leap of Faith, Scent of a Woman, Nobody's Fool, Hard Eight (the start of his career-long collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson), When A Man Loves a Woman, and as a notably bright spot in the terrible box office hit Twister. But it was his portrayal of a sexually recalcitrant sound man in Anderson's Boogie Nights that brought him to our first and clearest attention. He was impossible to ignore after this: 



His showing as Brandt, the toadying assistant in The Big Lebowski, cemented him in my mind as an actor to watch. For many, he provided some of the most subtle laughs in this gigantic cult film. Here, I love his ridiculous stiffness, his phony cackle, his mastery of the Coens' rubbery language ("They're the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers--inner-city children of promise but without the necessary means for a necessary means for a higher education"), how the breath leaves him after The Dude almost refers to Lebowski as "a cripple." And that moment where his whole body tenses up after asking Jeff Lebowski not to touch Mr. Lebowski's award? Golden: 



Of course, over a tremendous career path, he kept on knocking it out of the park, as in Todd Solondz's 1998 film Happiness playing a lonely man suffering from a crippling depression. Now, given how he has passed, I wonder how much inspiration for this role was perhaps taken from his own life...



In P.T. Anderson's Magnolia--one of my favorite of his performances--he gets to be a hero for one of the few times in his career. His portrayal of Phil Parma, the hospice care worker devoted to a dying TV producer (Jason Robards) is a miracle of you-are-there acting. Though Anderson's film is filled with tremendous performances, it's Hoffman's appearance that really stays with you, because his character is only one in this mammoth movie who's completely giving. For this, he won the 1999 Supporting Actor award from the National Board of Review (they twinned it with his nasty supporting turn in Anthony Mingella's The Talented Mr. Ripley): 



In Cameron Crowe's 2000 film Almost Famous, he undertook the role of famed music critic Lester Bangs, and became the truth-telling conscience of Crowe's largely autobiographical work. Is there any greater line than this: "The only true currency you carry in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." With his often growly voice, Hoffman delivers the line with the assurance of someone who knows what he's talking about:  



In Spike Lee's 25th Hour, Hoffman was terrific as a school teacher devoted to a pal (Edward Norton) destined for prison. In Todd Louiso's little seen Love Liza, he was devastating as a lover dealing with an ex's suicide: 



And in Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, he was both doubtful and terrifying as a small-time con-man out to take advantage of an enraged Adam Sandler's loneliness (the concept of loneliness seems to be a through-line in Hoffman's career, and I don't think that's just hindsight talking here):  



In the 2003 film Owning Mahoney, Hoffman is again superb as a gambling addict who doesn't know when to stop playing:  



After more fine work in the HBO movie Empire Falls and in Mingella's Cold Mountain, then came Bennett Miller's 2005 biopic Capote. Though some said he was miscast in the role, being much taller and bigger than the diminutive author, Hoffman latched onto and owned the role. With his impeccable style and vocal gymnastics, it's clear no one had any problem (at the time, at least) with this magnificent performance. In one of the finest scenes in this underrated movie, Hoffman's Capote talks with a source for his book In Cold Blood, and reveals to her his most inner hurts:

  For Capote, Hoffman won his only Academy Award, for Best Actor:



The award, and the following years, brought a hurricane of great acting from Hoffman to the fore. In Brad Bird's Mission Impossible III, he finally brought gravitas to a misbegotten series with his steely, superbly villainous support to his former Magnolia co-star Tom Cruise: 

 
In Tamera Jenkins' underseen 2007 film The Savages, he paired with Laura Linney as the siblings trying to take care of an aging, unloved dad (Philip Bosco). And in Sidney Lumet's final film, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, he played the desperate, drug-addicted son of a jewelry store owner to an ultimate degree. Opposite a withering Ethan Hawke, this is one of his bravest performances; it's impossible not to feel, to your toes, Hoffman's utter allegiance to this role: 



In Mike Nichols' complex 2007 film Charlie Wilson's War, Hoffman brought a stern yet strange tenderness to his role as a wild CIA operative who becomes a guide through the machinations of modern foreign relations for Tom Hanks' distracted senator. Hoffman won his second Oscar nomination here, opposite Mad Men's John Slattery, for Best Supporting Actor: 



Perhaps my favorite of his lead roles was for Charlie Kaufman's 2008 directorial debut in Synecdoche New York. Hoffman here makes you feel every moment of an unrecognized artist's life that's passing before our eyes. It's an incredibly difficult movie, but Hoffman--the biggest diamond in a jewel-studded cast--makes it work despite any misgivings the viewer might have. This would be my choice as the Hoffman performance I wish more people would see and appreciate: 



With John Patrick Shanley's adaption of his play, Hoffman again deservedly landed a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination as priest battling the derision of a snarling Mother Superior (Meryl Streep) in 2008's Doubt: 



I loved his nearly unrecognizable foray into animation voicing, as the cloistered pen-pal of a little girl in Adam Elliot's brilliant stop-motion film Mary and Max:  



And, again, I loved his quiet supporting portrayal of a baseball team manager who feels he's being undercut by a new way of crafting a team's roster in Bennett Miller's incredible Moneyball, from 2011: 



Hoffman contributed his sole film directorial effort with 2010's mournful Jack Goes Boating. He continued to make deep impressions with movies like A Late Quartet (a beautiful film, that)...



...and in George Clooney's The Ides of March, and the immensely popular The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (he was filming its sequel, Mockingjay, at the time of his death, and it's not known at press time whether he completed the role). But it was with P.T. Anderson's 2012 film The Master that he gave arguably his greatest performance as the megalomanical cult leader Lancaster Dodd, opposite Joachin Phoenix as his obsession-worthy friend Freddie Quell and Amy Adams as Dodd's controlling wife. A co-lead with Phoenix, Hoffman was wrongfully placed in the supporting role when it came time for the awards to be handed out, and so he easily earned his final Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. But, man, just LOOK at this scene, where Dodd uses his method of breaking down a person's most secret wounds on Quell. This is astounding work, on an equal par with Phoenix's magnificence:  

 
With all this, plus all of his landmark stage work as an actor, writer and director--in Sam Shepard's True West (switching roles on alternate nights with John C. Reilly), in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, and as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Saleman in particular--well, anyone would have to conclude that all actors would have given their very guts for a career like this. 

A month or more ago, I had read about Hoffman's incomprehensible heroin problem, and understood he'd checked himself into a treatment facility. Not being one to pay extra attention to actors' personal lives, I'd hoped this was a mere dalliance with the drug and that he was getting it taken care of. But I do have to admit, this past week, seeing Victoria Will's photo taken for Esquire at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, I instantly became extremely worried for him; his look is of a man spent, and though the picture is intentionally antiquated, with its ghostly impressions, it seems to intuitively illustrate the bottom of this man's downward spiral. And only now I learn this was an ongoing battle for him.

I'm torn up and crying over this--Hoffman was a highly unusual and courageous actor, unafraid of going to the darkest places and yet always we were there with him, simply because there was just something so intrinsically lovable about him. I wonder if he knew we all felt this way. Somehow, given how it all turned out for him, I think not. And, more than I once did, I'm forced into noticing  his own personal hurt buried in his portrayals of the damaged. I also have to wonder if he gave perhaps too much of himself to his roles; their complexity and nakedness perhaps depleted him (acting, contrary to many opinions, is not the easiest art to tackle). But I'll finally say: I loved him, and he was always someone I looked forward to seeing again, and now we're left with his tremendous output, snipped tragically short. I just can't even process the magnitude of this loss we're suffering. This final scene, from The Master, slayed me the moment I first witnessed it. But it does so even more now--it feels like a lush epitaph to a consistently revelatory career. 

RIP to Philip Seymour Hoffman, an artist of the highest order.

Free winds and no tyranny for you. Freddie. Sailor of the seas. You pay no rent. Free to go where you please. Then go. Go to that landless latitude, and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master--any master--then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first person in the history of the world...  

Film #147: Boogie Nights

Even though it has an immense cult following, Boogie Nights is one of those films I love in spite of my better judgment.

I can recall gendering at the beautiful one-sheet for Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough movie months before it was released in the fall of 1997. I marveled at its huge cast, and was excited about the subject matter--a trip through the Los Angeles porn industry of the late 70s/early 80s. I didn’t know who Anderson was at that time, having not seen his first feature, the small-time con film Hard Eight, but that would soon change. The Boogie Nights poster, though, with its intricate photo collage of characters from the film, promised an epic portrayal unlike anything ever attempted. I was extremely thrilled about seeing it.

In it, we follow its naïve central character, Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg, in his first really notable lead role), as he's ensnared into a makeshift family of porn mavens. As he’s performing tricks on the side at his busboy job at an L.A. nightspot, he’s spotted by the patriarchal porn auteur Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, in one of the best roles of his career). Impressed by his entire...um...package, Horner invites Eddie into the porn fold, and there his triumphs and troubles begin.

Eddie’s eventual transformation into the XXX-star Dirk Diggler is followed in great detail, but this story is really a kind of connective tissue for all the many other tales the film has to offer: Julianne Moore is a top-tier porn actress battling the courts and her ex-husband (John Doe) over custody of their son while using Horner’s coterie of performers as sort of stand-in children; William H. Macy is a meek assistant director struggling with his wife (porn queen Nina Hartley) and her hurtful infidelity; John C. Reilly is an amiable second-string performer (with a penchant for magic tricks) attempting to forge a stronger identity for himself; Don Cheadle is another beaten-down porn star who’s finding his race as a barrier to breaking into the world of stereo sales; Heather Graham is the sexy but largely innocent Rollergirl, searching for the family she can’t find at home.

And Horner himself is battling pressures to convert to video rather than film--an idea he finds abhorrent (this is especially poignant now, seeing as how 35mm is dying right before our eyes, and Anderson is on the front lines in keeping film alive). Throw into this mix Philip Seymour Hoffman as a schlubby sound guy, Luis Guzman as an enthusiastic outsider, Robert Ridgely as a troubled producer (he has a great scene at his downfall, and the movie is dedicated to him, as Ridgely died soon after production), Philip Baker Hall as an imposing moneyman (you have to love Anderson for resurrecting Hall's career), and Ricky Jay as Horner’s loyal photographer/editor, and you can get a sense of this film’s monumental ambition.

I find many facets of Boogie Nights to be quite wonderful. The widescreen cinematography, by Anderson regular Robert Elswit (who would go on to win an Oscar for his work on Anderson’s There Will Be Blood) is always vibrant and inventive, as is the diverse '70s-era source music score (pairing nicely with a sad circus-flavored underscore by Michael Penn). Anderson’s writes dialogue for dumb people particularly brilliantly, so there’s always funny conversation ensuing. The period detail in the garish art direction (by Bob Ziembicki) and costume design (by Mark Bridges, who's gone on to do The Fighter and The Artist) are spot-on. I love seeing Burt Reynolds tearing into a meaty role again and Julianne Moore is beautifully histrionic here, as she would be in Anderson’s Magnolia as well (both she and Reynolds received supporting Oscar nominations). As always, I find John C. Reilly to be a hoot as Reed Rothschild, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is sweetly doofy as the crewman who gets a crush on Eddie (his tortured confession of this to the unsuspecting Wahlberg is, I think, the movie’s most shattering scene).

But I also find that many parts don’t work: William H. Macy is a shamelessly barely-sketched punching bag of a character; Don Cheadle’s story fails to make a deep impression (note: any time you see a character in a white suit doing something as innocuous as buying donuts, you can bet that suit’s gonna be covered in blood by the end of the scene); and Graham’s Rollergirl, while extremely cute, also seems thinly-written. It feels like Anderson just has too much movie here for 2½ hours to hold (as wonderful as it is on the wide screen Boogie Nights would have been, storywise, a much more effective TV series). Also, the film owes a bit too much to the Goodfellas style of soaring-then-crashing storytelling (with the onslaught of the '80s being the rather too-obvious turning point, though thankfully the AIDS virus doesn't even make a cameo appearance, though it obviously looms in the world's future). I know that this sort of structure is an old trope that dates back to silent pictures, but that's kind of why it feels too pat, too easy for a filmmaker like Anderson (who's clearly shown in his subsequent work how complex a storyteller he can be). However, there's no crime in being young, and Boogie Nights feels like a young artist's playground.

Nevertheless, it is required viewing, if only for its extremely tense final third, which finds Eddie struggling with a cocaine addiction while trying to launch a hilariously ill-conceived musical career (the songs, performed bravely and horribly by Wahlberg and Reilly, include the original “Feel My Heat“ and an excruciating cover of "The Touch," the closing song to The Transformers Movie). Particularly memorable in this segment, too, is one of the great scenes in movie history, where a destitute Wahlberg, Reilly and ne’er-do-well Thomas Jane are stuck inside a free-basing coke-dealer’s house. The gun-toting dealer is played with maniacal energy by Alfred Molina; he’s so coked up, he has well-hidden suspicions that these three desperate guys are planning to rip him off. With firecracker’s being thrown left and right by his houseboy, he holds the guys semi-hostage as he insists on playing “Jessie’s Girl” and “Sister Christian” for them on his stereo. You’ll never hear these two songs in quite the same way again. It’s really a marvelously scary moment that puts you right there in this mess and gets your heart pounding like you've been smoking crack alongside Molina.

There are many other things I like about the movie: the note-perfect, stiffly-acted porn sequences, shot on a scratchy 16mm; the famously dazzling tour through one of Horner’s house parties, done in one long shot that recalls a scene out of Kalatozov's I Am Cuba, where we eventually follow a girl as she jumps into the pool out back, all to the perfectly-chosen tune of Eric Burdon and War’s “Spill the Wine”; and the final shot of the film, which recalls another Scorsese classic, Raging Bull, but which ends with, at last, a glimpse of what made Dirk Diggler famous. Most centrally, I wish Boogie Nights as a whole was as good as these individual elements. It stumbles in its enthusiasm, but it’s got moxie, ambition, and know-how; often overpraised, it remains an important film if only as the breakthrough for an electrifying artist like Paul Thomas Anderson who, with each passing work, only seems to be getting more and more challenging.