In 1977, a kid from nowhere had a dream of becoming somebody. It was a time when the sex was safe, the sex was business and business was booming. Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) AKA Dirk Diggler knew he had something to offer, and that something turned out to be the biggest thing the porn industry had ever seen.

An epic-size story about the adult film business in 1970s San Fernando Valley, Boogie Nights breaks convention and delivers sex, drugs, violence and unexpected tenderness. It is a classic backstage tale told through the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler and an extended family of filmmakers, who try to elevate the porn film to artistic heights. As exhilarating and moving as it is hilarious and daring, “with Boogie Nights we know we’re not just watching episodes from disparate lives but a panorama of recent social history, rendered in bold, exuberant colours,” Mick La Salle wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It is the first great film about the 1970s to come out since the ‘70s.” In only his second feature, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) serves notice of a potent cinematic force.