Terri (Azazel Jacobs, 2011)

Terri feels like the film the Duplass brothers' intended crossover Cyrus wanted to be, even if its subject matter is different and the overall quality of the two movies is not radically different. Azazel Jacobs' smooth, crisp, measured direction lingers on the odd but believable high-school world crafted by screenwriter Patrick DeWitt, drawing out its beats until "comedy" and "drama" become meaningless distinctions. This is not discomfort humor, or at least not in the sense of squirm comedy. Rather, Terri ekes comedy out of the discomfort of life itself, not the embarrassing shenanigans of warped loonies who may well exist but are not as common as the quiet embarrassments and indignities on display here.

The titular protagonist (Jacob Wysocki) is an overweight 15-year-old  who lives with his uncle, James (The Office's Creed Bratton), a loving but often removed man in the early stages of dementia. Picked on at school and made increasingly lonely by the mental slippage of the only person who speaks to him, Terri starts showing up late for class and constantly wears pajamas, only further distancing himself from the other kids. Taller and wider than everyone else, mocked for his poverty and weight, and decked out in clothes that isolate him in the frame, Terri looks absurd, but the look of muted loneliness on his face evokes a great deal of pain.

Brian De Palma: Casualties of War

On a first viewing, I found Casualties of War to be a fitfully intriguing, if overly quotidian Vietnam film that offered up a unique story but a predictable payoff. Furthermore, the tonal upheaval that occurs in the final act turned what had been one of Brian De Palma's most solid films into a well-meaning but sappy liberal morality play. Looking at it now, however, I see one of De Palma's better films, and a slyly literal take on the illegality of war that proposes such a simple, self-evident solution that it never seems to come to mind: what if someone actually took the horror and wrongness of war to court?

Unlike a court-martial film, Casualties of War is neither about a kangaroo court to make an example of the enlisted or a demonstration of the rotten chain of command. In fact, it isn't about the trial itself but the courage to bring one's fellow soldiers to that trial, overcoming self-doubt over incriminating one's fellow servicemen and intense pressure from everyone else to let the whole thing go. Coming off the upswing of strong (and strongly critical) Vietnam films like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, De Palma's film sticks firmly with the men on the ground. Less forgiving than Stone's semi-autobiographical film and less heady than Kubrick's movie, De Palma's feature shows the same breakdown of sanity and humanity not as the result of an officious, out-of-touch command but of the absence of any clear structure in an environment so confusing the trees themselves seem to be hostile.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

I cannot accurately pinpoint the moment Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story became my go-to lounge film. I saw it in theaters upon release only because one member in my group of friends insisted that we all go, and I found it enjoyable but too broad. I picked up the DVD to see the extended cut (so appropriately subtitled "The Unbearably Long, Self-Indulgent Director's Cut" that I'm still not sure whether the filmmakers released it as a joke on the crass manipulation of justly cut footage as a promotional device or if they were simply trying to protect themselves from backlash), watched it once and filed it away in the "to-sell" pile.

Before I could hock it, however, something compelled me to re-watch the film's theatrical cut. What I got was one of the funniest comedies of the decade, and the only genre parody in that time to even approach the level of hilarity of the films (and transgressive sitcom) directed by Edgar Wright. To say that I see new jokes with these new viewings would imply that I'm a gibbering idiot, as Walk Hard hedges to the Mel Brooks side of parodies, that of vaudevillian broadsides that can be seen from outer space. I know my way around enough of the musical mythos of the mid-'50s through the end of the '60s, though even a cursory knowledge is unnecessary to pick up on the flagrantly stressed digs at rockabilly, Bob Dylan and The Beatles (the only reference that might slip by those without a curious interest in classic rock is a Brian Wilson-esque studio meltdown). Unlike the most nuanced of comedies -- including the greatest rock movie of them all, This is Spinal Tap -- Walk Hard will not surprise viewers with new gags on repeat viewings.

What those viewings do reveal, however, is one of the most endlessly quotable comedies in years, especially for those who understand that, for all the movie's jabs at the various styles of pop in the mid-20th century, Walk Hard skewers not rock music but the increasingly banal, prefabricated manner with which it is documented in puff pieces posing at cinematic biographies. With promotional material most clearly establishing the film as a parody of Walk the Line, Walk Hard openly references other contemporary biopics like Ray and even classic documentaries like Don't Look Back. However, like Brooks' classic parodies, Walk Hard does not limit itself to specific genre satire. It cannot afford to, as it fits into that realm of parody that relies on a joke every minute, either a visual gag or a sharp one-liner. Of all the types of comedy, this method is the hardest to pull off and the one that usually results in the worst films, but the more I watch it, the more I think Walk Hard manages to walk that line (hard).

Certainly, one could (rightly) attribute much of the film's success to its perfect casting of John C. Reilly in the lead. Reilly can switch between dramatic gravitas, everyman relatability and broad comic absurdity like no actor since Tom Hanks. Like Hanks, Reilly is dashing enough to enjoy a steady career while being just off-center from typical Hollywood looks (and thus closer to the center of the rest of the populace) to make an audience feel more familiar around him, even when they're looking at his face magnified to the size of a giant screen. Reilly's casting alone seems on some level a reference to Jamie Foxx and how Ray practically erased his previous career as a comedian in the public consciousness and established him as a Serious Actor. Walk Hard approaches this from the other end; Reilly established himself as a dynamic character in the beginning of the new millennium, building off his memorable turns in Boogie Nights and Magnolia to win numerous plaudits for his work in Chicago (for which he received an Oscar nomination), Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Aviator and A Prairie Home Companion. By 2007, however, Reilly had already begun to reinvent himself as a more comedic performer, having appeared in Talladega Nights and the Tenacious D movie, as well as starting up as a regular on the avant-garde comedy program Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

Reilly's Dewey Cox is modeled after Johnny Cash, of course, and the film's opening moments are also its most tasteless, as writer-director Jake Kasdan plays on Cash's traumatic loss of his brother in a table saw accident that plagued the artist with guilt for the rest of his life. This farcical remix shows young Dewey and his brother Nate, a child prodigy on the piano, engaging in wildly dangerous acts, all the while insisting that nothing bad can come from them before a machete fight (no, really) ends in disaster.

Crass as this intro may be, it finely sets up Walk Hard's strategy of parody as the ultimate exaggeration. Once the film settles on Reilly, who takes over for the child actor even when Dewey's meant to be a teenager, Walk Hard moves away from this quasi-offensive material into an unrelenting attack on biopic tropes. At various stages, Reilly openly declares how old he's meant to be despite the lack of any effort to disguise his real age -- hysterically bad makeup is used for Dewey's elder years. Every actor appearing as a real musician, from Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly to Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman as The Beatles, remind the audience routinely who they are playing, fitting comfortably into the practice of biographical filmmakers who cater to those who don't know the stories of each artist while still placing focus on the apocryphal myths that shape that person's legend. The incessant 3rd-person self-referral underscores why this practice neither sparks enough interest in the unknowing moviegoer to impress and alienates the true fans who feel as if they're being condescended to.

Elsewhere, Kasdan mercilessly frames some of the most crowd-pleasing aspects of biopics in unflattering close-up. Dewey, having dropped out of high school and run away from his father, who never forgave Dewey for the incident with Nate -- to this day, I cannot watch Raymond J. Barry in a performance given before or after this without thinking of his refrain, "The wrong kid died!" -- realizes his dream when offered a recording contract. But that uplifting feeling of satisfaction catches in the throat when, just before, Dewey attracted the attention of producers when he fills in a club spot for an injured black rock artist, whom he completely rips off, down to stage banter. Dewey's musical career itself goes through all the ups and downs you might expect, from his random snatches of inspiration when he says something we know will become a song title, and he pauses as he understands it too. Meanwhile, he only spends enough time with his first wife (the always wonderful Kristen Wiig) to impregnate her, only to return to the drugs and groupies on the road.

Anyone who's ever watched more than one biopic within a close time range knows how many elements often overlap, and the greatest joke of Walk Hard is how, when Dewey is locked in detox to overcome drug addiction or trying to win the love of a woman who knows him well enough to avoid a committed relationship, it is not immediately apparent which artist/biographical film is being spoofed. The conceit of biopics is that they show us profiles of those with more interesting and unique lives than a normal person's, but the cycle of success, drugs, fallout and quiet recovery is so ubiquitous that these celebrities seem to be hitting marks even in real life. Goofy as it is, Walk Hard forces one to consider that biopics largely get picked up because they come with a built-in audience base and continue to enjoy critical raves from those who so rarely spot how many are the same.

Cox's story, like Spinal Tap's, gets maximum comedy from its musical element because it does not tie its protagonist to one genre. In fact, Dewey only ever remotely resembles Johnny Cash when he records the title song, sings with June Carter stand-in Darlene (Jenna Fischer), and when Dewey finds himself in the same soul-crushing, watered-down variety show Cash found himself hosting after he got sober but found that he'd burned too many bridges in his wild days. Reilly impressively runs through a convincing pastiche of rockabilly, Roy Orbison balladry, Dylanesque political awareness and surreality, experimental pop pomp in the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds/Smile -era, even proto-punk when an amphetamine-addled Dewey forces his band to run through "Walk Hard" at warp speed. Each of these snippets, some longer than others delve into the hypocrisy of these various rockers, from Orbison's plaintive ballads standing in contrast to the casual adultery of road touring to the supposed mind-opening properties of drugs serving mainly to help drive genuinely talented but already unbalanced people like Brian Wilson to madness.

In all of these twists and turns, Walk Hard never fails to throw out a one-liner at every turn. Nuggets like "learn to play the fucking theremin!" and "I do believe in you! I just know you're going to fail!" are just some of the nearly endless supply of quotable lines to be found in the film. At two separate points in the last month, I found myself talking about Walk Hard with people online, and in both cases the conversation led to posting various lines we loved, a back-and-forth that lasted hours because everyone had their own favorites. Where so many films in the loosely defined boundaries of the Apatow "collective" separate their one-liners with their heart, Walk Hard avoids the issue altogether by dispensing with any life lesson to focus entirely on parody and satire. Each zinger in Walk Hard can be said out of context between buddies, but they also contain barbs that flesh out the film's parody. I correctly pegged Walk Hard as an unsubtle movie when I first saw it, but I did not recognize that its lack of nuance is its strongest asset.

Reilly is boosted by entertaining supporting work from Chris Parnell, Wiig, Barry, Fischer, Tim Meadows and more, but no one sells the silliness of it all like the star. Lightweight as the movie is, Reilly does give one of those performances that makes the film, stretching himself farther than most who eventually collect awards for the more ponderous interpretations of the stiffly structured blueprint lampooned here. His bashful yet cocky delivery of the insanity of the dialogue gives lines funny on paper life, balancing the line between the innocent kid caught in a hedonistic lifestyle that overwhelms him and a battle-hardened veteran of the trenches that all films about rock stars from humble origins -- even the joke ones -- must demonstrate. There have been a number of better comedies made in the last decade of various levels of sophistication, but I simply have to respect this lowbrow goof-off for being more instantly watchable, endlessly quotable and just plain raucous, than anything short of In the Loop. Lord willing, enough other people might come to believe this that it slips into what The A.V. Club terms the "New Cult Canon."

Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York is the epic, self-destructive companion piece to Who Shot Liberty Valance. It posits that one need not have traveled out west to find romantic lawlessness, and that one could not find the answers to a more productive society back east. It is also proof that Martin Scorsese can make masterful work no matter the circumstances. Gangs of New York is his most artistically compromised picture, trimmed down even at its 167-minute length from a reported five-hour cut and commercialized in a futile attempt to make the film into some sort of hit. Yet it remains his most personal, above perhaps his erstwhile passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ, the ultimate paean to Marty's beloved hometown and an exorcism of his hangups.

The impositions placed upon the film by Miramax hindered this vision, yet perhaps they fueled the more bombastic visual choices that serve Scorsese's deconstruction of his career. Besides, the marketing of the film provides for a misdirection Scorsese attempts with the film itself, goading the audience into identifying Amsterdam, the underdog character who enjoys a romance and narrates the picture, played by an actor still known for being a teenage heartthrob (Leonardo DiCaprio), as the protagonist. He is not.

The real crux of the story, and the personification of the choices made by the film's director, is William Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis). He symbolizes the dying New York, at once Liberty Valance and Tom Doniphon. He's a bigot and a ruthless killer, but he has a sense of honor. So do many villains, of course, but Gangs of New York is about the transition in New York's history, not from anomie into civilization but the loss of the "nobility" of violence. Bill is not the symbol standing in the way of progress; he is the last of a dying breed.

Day-Lewis' performance here has been eclipsed by his work in There Will Be Blood, and Daniel Plainview is indeed a testament to the actor's ability to captivate an audience even with a character diametrically opposed to identification or empathy. Yet William Cutting has an emotional complexity that runs deeper even than Day-Lewis' earlier Christy Brown. When he kills the father of DiCaprio's character, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), in a street battle at the start, Cutting refuses to allow any of his gang, the Natives, to spoil the body. "He'll cross over whole," Bill declares, despite his vicious hatred of the Irish Catholicism Vallon represents. For Bill, why he's fighting someone is less important than how those enemies conduct themselves. In a quietly piercing scene, Bill confides in the adult Amsterdam, whom Bill accepts without learning his true identity. Draped in an American flag, Bill condenses his power, the power of anyone who holds it, into fear and the ability to manipulate it. He tells the boy about Vallon, what a great man he was; in one skirmish, Amsterdam's father got the best of ol' Bill and nearly killed him, sparing his foe's life only to force him to live with the shame. Bill notes that he cut out one of his own eyes because he could not look at Vallon.

Like the film, Bill is visually outlandish, absurd even. He routinely sports a red coat as if in a Nicholas Ray period piece, complete with pants that manage to be even longer than Day-Lewis' lanky frame can allow. It's the sort of get-up that sticks out even in a period picture: here is a man who doesn't need to care what others think. It's funny, then, that Bill should reflect Scorsese's aesthetic, given the issues he suffered, even as a universally acknowledge master, at Miramax's hand.

Scorsese's direction is without question the loosest in his oeuvre, or at the very least since Mean Streets threw the director far ahead of the minor accomplishments of his first two features. The opening gang fight, set to anachronistic music and even edited as if a submission to MTV, sets the tone for the film's structure as it draws a line in the sand separating those willing to play along in Marty's meticulously recreated sandbox from those expecting a more conventional movie. Yet Scorsese's direction tests the patience even of the loyal: scenes jut about as if someone unleashed a wild chimp into Thelma Schoonmaker's editing suite and the director simply trusted that his longtime collaborator knew what she was doing when he got the results back. Sudden transitions, awkward breaks, unnecessary cutaways in the middle of an action for a reaction shot or something else to break the scene: all of these issues exist in the film, the result of both the trimming and whatever held Scorsese and Schoonmaker's fancy.

Yet this seeming clumsiness allows the director to break entirely from the tropes that bind the genre. Scorsese worked within them for his superb The Age of Innocence but gave the characters an emotional resonance so many of these pictures chase but never obtain. Gangs, however, belongs firmly with his gangster pictures. Indeed, he casts all of the characters, be they actual gang members, policemen, whores or politicians, as gangsters. The women seduce and take from the men, who take from others to cover their losses, before giving their cut to corrupt coppers and bosses like Bill, who use the money to pocket politicians. It's far too tangled a web to be called a "vicious cycle."

Scorsese films these characters with the same passion he afforded to his earlier films, the ones that mixed character with aesthetic to make everything more visceral, more felt. He lost himself in the jumble of The Departed, but here Marty manages to convey the states of mind of both lead characters. He charts both Amsterdam's rash bravery and the loathing he feels for himself and his self-doubt as well as Bill's sadness at the "rising of the tide" that will wash away everything Bill values. The two characters (and moods) play off each other, Bill's nobility and paternal treatment of Amsterdam compounds the boy's feelings of guilt for not avenging his father, and when Amsterdam finally does make his move, in a craven attempt to get the jump on the Butcher, Bill's feelings toward the changing world are confirmed: Amsterdam is not an evil man, and certainly not a villain in the same way that Bill isn't, but he represents the shift of gangsterism from something done out in the open with a set of rules to a world governed by backstabbing, literal and figurative.

Because Scorsese somehow taps into two mindsets at once through his disjointed style, everything is magnified. The sets, painstakingly crafted in Rome, are massive and establishing -- it's a telling contrast of convictions that George Lucas, upon visiting his old friend during production, remarked, "Sets like that can be done with computers now." Like the sets, the jargon is so accurate that even the characters seem to have no idea what the idioms mean and need many translated. The story is Shakespearean, and Monk McGinn (Brendan Gleeson), a big Irish mercenary who once fought for Vallon, even says so when he sees Amsterdam save Bill from assassination. Later, Amsterdam kills the crooked cop Jack (John C. Reilly, the best of the supporting cast) in a scene that recalls Hamlet stabbing Polonius through the arras. Too, the curtain that Jack yanks down in his death throes reveals a comically outsized cross, at once a reminder of the guilt that drives Amsterdam to avenge his father and Scorsese's pointed jab at himself for redirecting the Catholicism in his films squarely on the guilt that he's still exploring in this film.

The film's amplified visuals reach their apex with the climax, a thunderous vision of the Draft Riots that grows so huge that even an elephant roams the street at one point. Gangs of New York, which halted post-production for a time in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, is about not fighting wars that are not yours to fight. Amsterdam spins his wheels for most of the film because his subconscious recognizes that Bill's conflict with the Vallons ended with his father's death, yet he presses on because he feels the need for vengeance. Many of the Irish immigrants who arrive in America are the first to be conscripted in the new draft, and Scorsese overlaps a scene of a batch of soldiers being shipped off on one of the same boats that brings home a hold full of coffins with every docking with an Irish ballad that mourns the state of the immigrants, forced to flee starvation only to find themselves forced into someone else's war. Ironically, the one war worth fighting, the war to preserve the union, is met with indifference, then aggression from the New Yorkers who see themselves as their own entity. Thus, the greatest city in the Union is reduced to what might look no different than a bombed Confederate city, to be rebuilt as a part of the Union through the same backhanded procedures that returned the South to the fold. Scorsese isn't asking us to keep quiet and accept violence against us, but he also asks that we stop and think before fighting, and as such Gangs of New York becomes not only a companion to John Ford but Bruce Springsteen, specifically his own post-9/11 triumph, The Rising.

In the slaughter and smoky haze of the riots, Amsterdam and Bill settle their score. This is the last chance Bill will have to die "a true American," and he takes it, killed honorably by Amsterdam rather than face the world he sees on the horizon, even through the massive cloud kicked up by the shelling. Note that, at the end of the film, Bill, not Amsterdam, rests in the grave next to Vallon's, and as Scorsese suddenly jumps through history to the present (well, just before it, as he leaves the World Trade Center intact), we see time forgetting the men who helped shape the city, and the fact that the movie is about those who created and not destroyed is why the Towers remain. "The appearance of the law must be upheld," Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent) told Bill early in the film, "especially when it's being broken." That dishonesty stuck in Bill's craw, and he later tells Tweed, "You can build your filthy world without me." Thus, he wouldn't feel so bad about being covered up by the vines, forgotten by the world he laid the foundation for -- as the tagline reminds us, "America was born in the streets -- and we shouldn't pity him either, not simply because of his violent acts but because obscurity is far nobler than cheap veneration.

Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights revolves around one of the most darkly comic MacGuffins in cinematic history. Like the shark in Jaws, the member of Dirk Diggler at once drives the film and remains unseen, achieving a mythic quality before the payoff. We gauge its size through the reaction shots of those who gaze upon it. Anderson films close-ups of widened eyes and slacked jaws; women (and jealous, insecure men) gaze lustfully at Dirk's diggler, and its symbolic import drives most of the film. Yet just as the shark ultimately didn't live up to the hype -- who can miss that bounce when the shark leaps onto the boat? -- so too does Dirk's member fail to measure up in the end, a flaccid and impotent fossil of the great beast it once was.

Boogie Nights' immediate and most pervasive influence is, of course, Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas: both use highly stylized direction (Anderson's clearly derives from Marty's) to weave an epic tragicomedy of a seedy underworld, GoodFellas with organized crime and Boogie Nights the porn industry. Anderson defines his world with two early, extended tracking shots, one in a discotheque that briefly introduces the large cast and a second, at a pool party, that gives them shape and definition. Both of these tracking shots, as with the magnificent shots of the club and the Copa in GoodFellas, are shimmering and sensual, not so much calling attention to themselves -- as so many extended tracking shots do -- but calling attention to themselves through the narcissism of the world it paints; in both films, the shots justify themselves by reflecting the vanity and self-indulgence of the areas they profile.

At the discotheque works Dirk (né Eddie Adams), a high school dropout who cleans dishes in between working as a male prostitute. His home life recalls Rebel Without a Cause, a harpy-like mother who snaps at her submissive husband; Dirk has to take a bus from Torrance to Reseda to work at the nightclub, a job he could just as easily get closer to home, but then he might not enjoy the benefit of that extra hour each way away from his family. One night, Eddie meets Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), an adult film director who's heard rumors of the particularly gifted washroom boy. Jack invites the lad to his lavish home in the suburbs, a convenient offer when Eddie runs away from home, and before you know it Eddie renames himself Dirk and jumps into his new occupation with vigor.

Toeing the line between absurdity and epic tragedy, Boogie Nights charts the rise and fall of the Me Generation through the highs and lows of the pornography industry, the snowblind cocaine binge of its stars a microcosm for the nation's own drug escapism and the effect of the VHS tape on the business representative of the Reagonomic turn to cold, pragmatic capitalism above all else. Anderson, for his part, understands how ridiculous his story is, and he fills the screen with goofball characters too odd to be anything but believable, such as Don Cheadle as a country music-loving porn star who by day works as a stereo salesman and audiophile; Heather Graham as a young starlet who never takes off her roller skates; John C. Reilly as Reed Rothchild, the former big star who gets gently shoved to the role of the sidekick to make way for Dirk even before the kid enters the business; and William H. Macy as Bill, the cuckolded assistant director, always forced to suffer the indignity of his wife's (porn star Nina Hartley, who ironically enjoyed reportedly the most stable and longest lasting relationship in the business*) public adultery.

Too, Anderson uses his camera with a great deal of wit: he oversaturates the pool party with light, a cheeky emphasis on the sunny appeal of this line of work to the impressionable and, as we learn quickly, childlike Dirk. When Scotty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the gay boom operator, arrives, Anderson cuts to his POV, framing Dirk in an iris. Naturally, the scenes involving actual porn shoots are hysterical, with the characters woodenly delivering basic dialogue as Jack looks on, brow furrowed in concentration as if a compatriot of the New Hollywood filmmakers taking cinema to bold new territories around the same time. Anderson's stylistic quick-tracks and brightly colored sheen are captivating and immersive even as they are off-putting, gently separating us from the fast-paced, gaudy world he's documenting to allow us to spot the cracks forming before the world of leopard prints and suede crumbles around them.

Working with a cast of Altmanesque proportions, Anderson nevertheless adheres to Scorsese's GoodFellas formula of centering the action on a few characters and rooting the camera in the point of view of the main protagonist. Like Henry Hill, Eddie/Dirk falls into his seedy line of work in adolescence -- Henry starts working for the mob as a boy, while the emotionally stunted, teenage Eddie finds the same familial comfort in adult films -- and rises through the ranks by knowing the game in and out. Dirk even has a primal innocence that Hill never exhibited: in his first shoot, he sheepishly asks if he's doing well, gently asking for encouragement from both his partner in the scene and the people filming. Even as he edges Reed to the sidelines, he develops a deep friendship with the guy. Yet, as Henry before him, Dirk loses himself to cocaine, the white powder affecting his performance and seeding jealous paranoia in his mind, fueling an impotent rage that sends him into a tailspin. Mark Wahlberg, then underwear model and wannabe rapper who played like the New Kids on the Block (of which his brother Donnie was a member) crossed with Vanilla Ice, manages to walk the same tightrope Ray Liotta traversed, between reactive dependency on the factors that affect the character and propulsive acting.

Also key to the story and its thematic purpose is Jack. Played by Burt Reynolds, possibly the icon of '70s populist cinema, Jack represents a perversion of the nostalgia of the decade. As much as he's a seasoned pro, Jack genuinely believes the bullshit he's slinging -- that he's a true filmmaker bringing art to the genre, that he discovers and fosters artistic talent and that he's a father figure to these strung-out, lost children -- and Reynolds makes us like him almost in spite of himself. Perhaps the central performance of the film, however, is Julianne Moore as Amber Waves, the aging porn star who projects the matronly love she's not allowed to give her actual child, separated by her vindictive ex-husband, onto the people in the business, offering a bastion of warmth and support for kids too dumb to realize that she's worse than all of them. She acts out a reverse Oedipal complex with Dirk, her feelings falling somewhere in-between motherly love and sexual lust; a testament to her misplaced sensibilities, she is the one who first offers Dirk cocaine, setting in motion his downfall.

Boogie Nights takes a turn for the worse, symbolically, on the eve of the new decade, with a murder-suicide that grinds the festivities and optimism to a screeching halt. Bill's explosive solution to his wife's infidelity is brief and brutal, ushering in the age of instant gratification: soon, Jack's financier (Robert Ridgely) is busted for possession of child pornography, and his new producer (Philip Baker Hall) curtly tears down Jack's belief in the art of his films, forcing the director to make cheap, to-the-point pictures to be released straight to VHS.

A dark comedy floats over the entire picture, but it dives into the blackest abyss in the third act. Buck (Cheadle) cannot secure a loan for his own stereo outlet, as the bank won't finance a porn star, thus trapping him in the lifestyle. His dream become a harsh nightmare, Jack's cool enthusiasm for his work transforms into bitter workmanship, and both he and Rollergirl unleash their pent-up fury on a derisive amateur performer. Dirk and Reed fall out of the porn business in their addled and attempt to land a record deal, and dire straits force Dirk to return to his life as a male prostitute, leading to an altercation with a group of homophobes.

Brilliantly illustrating the cultural shift from the carefree, self-appraising narcissism and the outright, desperate solipsism of Reagan's '80s is the final extended scene, in which Dirk, Reed and their buddy Todd (Thomas Jane) attempt to scam and rob a drug dealer (Alfred Molina). Molina's apartment condenses the difference between the two decades by replacing the faux-homely, gaudy, sickly warm splendor of '70s decor with icy modern interior design: harsh, white lighting illuminating the slick, mathematically precise furniture, speakers booming soulless synth-pop to match the feel of the decor. One of the most twisted, bizarrely funny sequences I can recall seeing -- and the only sequence in contemporary film that matches the odd tension of one of Quentin Tarantino's elongated scenes -- Todd's plan strikes us as doomed from the start and only gets worse as Molina bandies wildly about the place waving a gun around while a Vietnamese boy in the corner of the living room tosses firecrackers to freak these coked-up robbers out even further. It ends with the sudden, comic brutality of a Tarantino climax, paving the way for a change of heart in Dirk.

Boogie Nights ends with the characters reconciled, several living in Jack's home, the familial undertones of initial interactions now fully developed ties. Yet the comforting ending belies the tragedy of the film: whenever any of these characters interact with the outside world -- as they did in most of the third act -- they are beaten, shot, derided and shunned. Jack will never make another film that will play in a theater; Amber will never gain custody of her child; Dirk and Rollergirl are just two high school dropouts with talents that can be considered old and useless on a yearly basis (surf a few web sites on a virus-protected computer to see an industry that shoehorns its performers into the mature category before they even hit 30**). Anderson is kind enough (though perhaps naïve) not to show any characters ravaged by AIDS, as we so many porn stars during the '80s (among them John Holmes, the basis for Dirk Diggler), but one could scarcely call the ending a happy one. These characters are trapped in their version of Grey Gardens, cut off by a world that sanctimoniously condescends to them even as they increasingly embrace pornography's ethos of gratification and hollow glamor. Even in their glitzy, expensive estate, they're as manipulated and castrated by Reagan's economy and the rise of empty moralism as the poor.



*Research for this film was...interesting.
** Again, very interesting.