CCFF2022: Chicago Critic’s Fest Celebrates 25th Anniversary of ‘Boogie Nights,’ on May 16

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CHICAGO – The 9th Chicago Critics Film Festival (CCFF) is on DAY FOUR, and will feature the film “Boogie Nights” – directed by Paul Thomas Anderson – in a special 25th Anniversary screening. The Fest continues through May 19th, click CCFF for schedule and ticket info.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

“Boogie Nights” (1997) not only serves as one of the great films of the 1990s, but also has one of the great casts of that era, many of them early in their soon-to-be-iconic careers. Mark Wahlberg is Eddie Adams, a high school drop out in 1977, who is washing dishes in a nightclub when he is “discovered” by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), a notorious director of porn films. As Dirk Diggler, Eddie soon has unexpected success, and joins a disjointed “family” of porn stars which includes Roller Girl (Heather Graham), Amber (Julianne Moore, Buck (Don Cheadle) and Reed (John C. Reilly), in addition to production crew “Little Bill” (William H. Macy) and Scotty J. (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The golden age of porn is fading fast, so the inevitable “ups and downs” are about to occur. “Boogie Nights” is epic cinema, re-creating a time and place that was another inevitable part of the American Dream. Wahlberg was in the ideal point in his early career to imbue Dirk with the perfect manic energy, and the entire cast delivers the brief era in all of its shiny, happy and destructive tendencies. A masterpiece. (7pm).

’Boogie Nights’ at the 9th CCFF on May 16th, 2022
Photo credit: New Line Cinema

Also screening on May 16 for the 9th CCFF is “Shorts Program #2” (5pm) and “The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See the Titanic” (10pm).

The 9th Chicago Critics Film Festival returns after a truncated 2021 event and the 2020 pandemic cancellation. It is the the only Film Festival curated by film critics, and highlights the 2022 films from the early year festivals like Sundance and SXSW.

Original Trailer for “Boogie Nights”…

By PATRICK McDONALD Editor and Film Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com