I remember how this movie blew my mind when I first saw it, when I was 17. I’d barely seen any great movies at that time and Boogie Nights really opened my eyes, I guess, and made me watch movies differently, I came out of the cinema truly shaken. Like another movie from the same year, though, L.A. Confidential, it never quite hits me in quite the same way as it did back then. Paul Thomas Anderson has proven he can do a lot better – in fact, thinking about it during this viewing, I realised that I even think Hard Eight is a more interesting movie than this. The thing about Boogie Nights is it’s such a first-time moviemaker movie – even more than Hard Eight was. Not a frame goes by without another idea occuring behind the camera. The result always feels disjointed and slightly impersonal – even back in 1997 I remember pushing to the back of my mind the thought, “is this guy just copying Tarantino here?”

But there are some killer scenes, and a killer soundtrack – my favourite is always the firecracker “Jessie’s Girl” scene, and I still can’t believe that that’s Alfred Molina, lol. I’ll always watch this movie, despite its problems.

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