of the two comparisons regularly levelled at paul thomas anderson's early work, i find scorsese a little more accurate than altman. it's a love of movies that fuels this stuff, an excess of style in which cracks begin to appear and 'humanity' seeps through, and that's something i'll always associate with scorsese, at least from the nineties onwards. there are a growing number of critics calling out anderson as a fake, an insincere show-off who cares more about impressing than expressing, but i always seem to find strong emotional (and sometimes intellectual) undercurrents to his work, and despite its obvious debts to other films and slightly labored metaphors for cultural change, boogie nights and its depiction of a wild, screwed up sub-culture (or family, more accurately) are no exception. this is a great moving picture in the classic sense, in that it moves, it's as alive with motion as any dance, and it's impossible not to get swept up along with it.
