Boogie Nights

I cannot believe that I watched this on holiday in Italian dub with subtitles and loved it as much as I did I also cannot believe the movie works out the way it did, but it somehow works. A movie does not have to subvert your expectations through cynicism, quite the opposite in this case. I thought for sure Jack would be an evil abuser of power who is jealous of Dirk and Amber, but quite the contrary, sure he obviously isn’t the best guy, but he cared for his workers. I thought for sure the whole cast would have a bad ending unless they got out, I was again surprised. Yet even still they managed to delve in to the real dark places the porn industry is littered with. Yet unlike most movies where it’s either understated or dramatically overstated, PTA somehow manages to perfectly balance the level of good and bad in the movie to scale with what the industry often sees. No that is not a defense of the porn industry (I personally don’t watch it because of these very things), but it’s the idea of not needing to shine the bad light on something all the time, especially when it comes to endings. All that being said if it wasn’t for Jack a LOT of these characters would’ve had that bad ending. Every industry and everyone needs the people they’re closest with to be good. This is also a rare review where I haven’t checked what anyone else thinks before writing my full take on what I perceived the director to be trying to tell us, I could be way off and feel like an asshole.