big night movie review new york times

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New Jersey, 1950s. Two brothers run an Italian restaurant. Business is not going well as a rival Italian restaurant is out-competing them. In a final effort to save the restaurant, the broth... Read all New Jersey, 1950s. Two brothers run an Italian restaurant. Business is not going well as a rival Italian restaurant is out-competing them. In a final effort to save the restaurant, the brothers plan to put on an evening of incredible food. New Jersey, 1950s. Two brothers run an Italian restaurant. Business is not going well as a rival Italian restaurant is out-competing them. In a final effort to save the restaurant, the brothers plan to put on an evening of incredible food.

• Campbell Scott
• Stanley Tucci
• Joseph Tropiano
• Tony Shalhoub
• Marc Anthony
• 123 User reviews
• 33 Critic reviews
• 80 Metascore
• 9 wins & 17 nominations

Top cast 29

• Man in Restaurant

• Woman in Restaurant
• (as Andrei Belgrader)

• Loan Officer

• Alberto N. Pisani

• Woman Singer

• Man on Truck
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Stanley Tucci co-wrote this movie, because he wanted a decent part for himself.
• Goofs When Ann arrives at the restaurant and is standing at the bar, she is wearing black heels. Then, as she walks over to look at the paintings with Primo, she is wearing flat white shoes. When she later dances with Primo, she is wearing black heels again.

Primo : To eat good food is to be close to God.

• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: The First Wives Club/Big Night/Surviving Picasso/Last Man Standing/Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)
• Soundtracks Stornelli Amorosi Written by Ovidio Sarra (as Sarra) and Astro Mari Performed by Claudio Villa

User reviews 123

• Mar 27, 2006
• How long is Big Night? Powered by Alexa
• Did Stanley Tucci really cook an omelette in the ending scene?
• September 20, 1996 (United States)
• United States
• Bữa Tiệc Lớn
• 32 Broad Street, Keyport, New Jersey, USA (restaurant exterior)
• Rysher Entertainment
• Timpano Production
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $4,100,000 (estimated)
• $12,008,376
• Sep 22, 1996
• $12,009,094

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 49 minutes

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‘Big Night’ review: A test of principles, place, and privileges

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

The “war on drugs” has never been an easy topic of discussion. Since Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power in 2016, the machinery responsible for state-sponsored killings had been set in motion, claiming thousands of lives, mostly from the urban poor . Yet the fast-paced nature of today’s mediascape has left most of these important stories buried under the entertainment economy, forgotten in favor of the next thing that triggers moral outrage, of which there is plenty.

Cinema has responded to this erasure by serving as an archive, taking time to capture the milieu and the changing attitudes towards these violations of human rights. Films such as Respeto (2017; dir. Treb Monteras), Neomanila (2017; dir. Mikhail Red), and BuyBust (2018; dir. Erik Matti) place their characters in the middle of a fictionalized community ravaged by it; The Nightcrawlers (2019; dir. Alexander A. Mora) shadows the lives of those who are tasked to report it; and Aswang (2019; dir. Alyx Arumpac) and Tao Po (2021; dir. Mae Paner) both offer a haunting picture of those directly within the web of loss. While any cinematic effort will never bear the same weight as the stories they draw from, each work brings audiences asymptotically closer to the roots of these injustices; the repetition becoming a continuous effort at defying the network of neglect.

The ‘Aswang’ syllabus: Articles to read after watching the documentary

Unlike the thrillers, dramas, and documentaries that came before it, writer-director Jun Robles Lana makes the bold choice of making Big Night a comedy: one that places the wide, mainstream audience of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), usually composed of families, into the subjective reality of the wrongfully accused.

Dharna (Christian Bables), a beloved hairdresser from the slums, suddenly finds her “dead name” on the barangay “watch list” — a document of suspected drug addicts and pushers who often become the target of summary executions. Reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s The Trial , Dharna goes on an Odyssey towards proving her innocence, navigating the bureaucratic structures that have imprisoned her to this fate while simultaneously trying to figure out why she is on the list in the first place.

The first scene of the film — where a boy who is assassinated midday is made the butt of a sexual joke, while the rest of the community continues to go about their All Saint’s Day celebration as if nothing had happened — is a jarring, almost disgusting opener that completely sets the tone for the rest of the film. In displaying the lack of sustained moral outrage and panic in the community, it captures the most undiscussed aspect of Philippine society: how we have become desensitized to violence and how moral apathy pervades not because of people’s malicious intent or commitment to ignorance, but because people feel the need to move on in order to live, to keep on making a living.

But when the joke is on you, things aren’t so funny. It isn’t until Dharna herself is included in the watch list that the threat she’s been witnessing becomes real to her. Yet her worries are dismissed by everyone else, even her boyfriend Zeus (the charming scene-stealer Nico Antonio) who is preparing for his last pageant. They argue that Dharna is an upstanding citizen who has a reputation for goodness. What could go wrong? Only her friend Biba (Sunshine Teodoro), her father (Ricky Davao), and her siblings (Awra Bringuela and VJ Mendoza) take her seriously.

Whatever works in Big Night is because it harnesses the talents of Christian Bables — whose star-making turn in Die Beautiful five years ago garnered him acclaim. Previous works have failed to utilize what makes him such an indelible onscreen presence: his inherent lovability, his underdog quality, the levity he brings to every role, no matter how serious, and the rich inner life he imbues each character. Around generous actors, Bables becomes a force to be reckoned with and Big Night is filled to the brim with them — from the corrupt politician-turned-bar owner Madam Chair Cynthia (Eugene Domingo), the religious hypocrite Mr. Roja (Soliman Cruz), the socialist midwife Melba (the underrated Janice de Belen), and the movie star-turned-politician Donato Rapido (John Arcilla). Lana has always been an actor’s director and the performances he draws out from each one turns stars into an array of constellations.

FULL LIST: Winners, MMFF 2021 Gabi ng Parangal

When Dharna requests help from barangay officials and her loved ones, her principles are tested at each juncture and, knowingly and unknowingly, she is subjugated without reward — putting makeup on cadavers, helping pregnant women give birth, offering to give free haircuts, pretending to convulse to help an ambulance pass through a checkpoint, and walking for hours around flagpoles and across the slums.

There is much about the circumstance that merits a breakdown, each scene added to a growing list of frustration without release. Because what do you do when those in power are more concerned about what they can gain than with what you can lose? Who do you go to when those who are tasked to uphold your rights are the ones taking them away? How do you negotiate when your life’s on the line? By asking these questions and spotlighting these moments, Lana creates a portrait that is less about the resilience of Filipinos and more concerned with how this fear of death is taken advantage of by others.

Crucial to understanding this is how entertainment becomes complicit to these injustices. People at positions of power use spectacle as a way to distract patrons and accrue influence over the community, while simultaneously planting manipulative seeds. With people at bars and watching movies, there is an illusion of safety that allows work in the underbelly to continue. It’s a terrifying truth, especially considering our country’s long history of celebrities-turned-politicians , a tradition that is likely only to continue in the upcoming national elections .

It’s easy to see the ending (one that, to me, registers as a dream sequence due to the blackout beforehand) as one that lacks imagination and hope for its character. But Big Night is not an empowering film. It can’t be, because the mere conditions from which it draws its absurdity from is cruel and oppressive. What it manages to highlight is how communities can become acclimated to this disempowerment and how abuse can become commonplace, so much so that people lose the need to question it. It shows how systems breed tyrants who rule under the guise of benevolence and how citizens, no longer used to kindness and equity, learn to settle for less and are forced to participate in a game rigged against them.

When Dharna looks into the camera, it is an admission: that even for a filmmaker as talented and socially aware as Lana, he cannot imagine a way out of the labyrinth of suffering. Instead, he asks that of us as an audience: to stare at the faces we’ve long been ignoring. – Rappler.com

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Breaking Bread on the 25th Anniversary of Big Night

In the 25 years since Stanley Tucci ’s “ Big Night ” was released in 1996, there has been, in America, a great upsurge of movies and television shows revolving around the world of restaurants, chefs, and fine dining. Tucci’s film, which he co-wrote with Joseph Tropiano and co-directed with Campbell Scott (who also appears in the film as a somewhat odd car salesman), about the final days of a struggling Italian restaurant in 1950s New Jersey, run by two immigrant brothers—businessman Secondo (Tucci) and brilliant chef Primo ( Tony Shalhoub )—was certainly not the first such film. Outside of America, there had already been, just in the decade or so before, Juzo Itami ’s “ Tampopo ,” Alfonso Arau ’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” and Ang Lee ’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” (and depending on whether or not you wished to count such a thing, Peter Greenaway ’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and & Her Lover”)—but it certainly seems to have opened the floodgates. Since then, there has been no shortage of film and TV shows that deal not just with cooking, but the life struggles of those who cook at a high level, including films like cooking-as-a-metaphor-for-Jon-Favreau’s-film-career “ Chef ,” but also reality competitions like “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Top Chef.” The common thread in a lot of these post-“Big Night” products is how difficult it is to succeed, not just as a chef, but as a professional, as a person. “Chef” was seemingly born out of Favreau’s foundering creative spark after his unlikely move from independent cinema to the world of studio blockbusters. “Top Chef” is at least as much about who goes home, and when, and for what reason, as it is about who finally wins the season.

Because, of course, “Big Night” is about a restaurant that shuts down, a restaurant that fails. The film takes place over the course of a few days, as Secondo tries to find a way to keep his and Primo’s flailing restaurant, Paradise, from going under. Despite Primo’s genius, the restaurant is doing anemic business due to the fact—at least according to rival, but avuncular, restaurateur Pascal ( Ian Holm )—that the chef is too precious about his food and is unwilling to make any concessions to what American customers unfamiliar with Southern Italian food at its purest might want to eat. Indeed, when Secondo suggests to Primo that they maybe take the expensive and unpopular seafood risotto off the menu, Primo thinks they could replace it hot dogs. “They might like that,” he says.

In a last-ditch effort to save their business, Secondo, with Pascal’s help, sets up an invitation-only dinner party at Paradise, at which will be a journalist to cover the event, because, so Pascal has promised, his friend, the great jazz bandleader and singer Louis Prima will be making an appearance. So the stage is set for a mostly light, occasionally romantic, and very funny comedy, but one grounded in everyday realism, and also fraught not just with the suspense inherent in seeing if Secondo’s plan will pay off, but also with subplots that the audience knows will eventually blow something up—specifically the revelation that Secondo is cheating on his girlfriend Phyllis ( Minnie Driver ) with Gabriella ( Isabella Rossellini ), who also happens to be Pascal’s wife. Needless to say, every one of these people will be at the party.

Twenty-five years on, “Big Night” holds up like gangbusters. As funny, and as filled with wonderful, charming performances as the film is—Tucci and Shalhoub are both basically perfect, Holm acts like a wild imp throughout, Driver effortlessly gives the kind of performance that used to be called “winning”—it is nevertheless infused throughout with an unavoidable melancholy. There’s a terrific shot, just before the dinner party gets started, just before the real night’s work kicks off, of Cristiano ( Marc Anthony ), the Paradise’s busboy and waiter, stepping outside, into the dusk, to smoke a cigarette, and the camera lifts up into the air to show the emptiness and quiet of the New Jersey street. This cuts to a pan down the long table and its simple, elegant glass-and-silverware, white napkins and tablecloth, before tilting up to Secondo, Primo, and Cristiano, standing together, dressed for work, all to the strains of Matteo Salvatore’s gorgeous “Mo Ve’la Bella Mia Da La Muntagna.” The shot sets up a rather intense feeling of anticipation for the party about to begin (somewhat counterintuitively, given the gentleness of the two shots), but also feels ineffably sad. Somehow, perhaps, the audience knows what’s to come.

Another thing that “Big Night” has now taken upon itself, without asking for the responsibility, is the weight of our current existence, from roughly March of 2020 until now (but hopefully not too much longer). For one night, Paradise looks not merely like the greatest restaurant anyone has ever been to, with its dancing and drinks and timpano , but could ever hope of ever going to. But in the end, it still shuts down. As restaurants all over the country and the world have shut down, not through any fault of the owners—and despite Secondo’s many faults, I’m not sure one can blame him or Primo for running a restaurant that went under for being too good —but because customers have had to stay home simply because they didn’t want to catch a disease, or to give it to others. And while options for restaurant pick-up and delivery options have been abundant, with the fast financial uncertainty of any given household being what it is, one is more likely to have McDonald’s delivered to one’s home than risotto from the best Italian restaurant in your town.

As many people’s most recent experience of sitting down for a nice meal in a nice restaurant withdraws further into memory, revisiting “Big Night” now brings with it a wistfulness for a world that we all, at our most pessimistic, fear may be gone for good, at least as we once knew it. You watch the dinner party now, and they’re all sitting so close together . Who could have ever imagined something like that would one day be something we remembered , rather than experienced all the time?

“Big Night” closes with one of the most poignant final scenes of, at minimum, any film of the 1990s, if not even beyond that. After everything has blown up, and Louis Prima didn’t show (he was never going to), and Paradise is about to be gone forever, the party’s over, and it’s very early in the morning, Secondo walks into the kitchen. Only Cristiano is there, and Secondo begins making eggs for both of them. In one unbroken shot, he finishes, adds a big chunk of bread to each plate, and wordlessly the two men begin to eat. Then Primo, with whom Secondo has recently fought terribly, arrives. Secondo puts half his eggs onto another plate, adds bread. Cristiano leaves them alone, and the two brothers sit together, and, still silently, eat their breakfast. Just the two of them, jobless, keeping within their own circle, their own household. As content as their current circumstances will allow.

“Big Night” is now available to stream on Paramount+. 

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Revisiting ‘Big Night,’ the Movie That Made Me Fall in Love With Restaurants

Notes on a classic restaurant film, plus a roundup of the week’s food-related entertainment news

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A version of this post originally appeared on September 27, 2019, in “Eat, Drink, Watch” — the weekly newsletter for people who want to order takeout and watch TV. Browse the archives here.

Usually, this newsletter covers all the hot food TV shows du jour. But since this is actually my last installment of Eat, Drink Watch (more on that in a bit), I’d like to focus on a nostalgic favorite that, like Julie & Julia and Eat Drink Man Woma n , brought the best aspects of cooking to the big screen, and inspired my own personal love of this genre. Let’s now turn our attention to a little movie called Big Night .

The ultimate movie for restaurant lovers

Big Night is the rarest of all food movies: a tight, smart comedy with a big heart that captures so much of what we love about restaurants. I’m pleased to report that 23 years after its initial release, Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s indie film is still as charming as ever, and its exploration of the tension between commerce and creativity in the food world still feels fresh and relevant today.

The movie tells the story of two Italian immigrants— chef Primo (Tony Shalhoub), and his maitre d’ brother Secondo (Tucci) — running a struggling restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. Their business, Paradise, is perpetually upstaged by the flashier Italian restaurant across the street, Pasquale’s, whose owner, Pascal (Ian Holm), has designs on bringing the brothers into the fold. Facing foreclosure, Primo and Secondo take a tip from Pascal and decide to cook a blowout meal in the hopes of attracting jazz singer Louis Prima, thinking that his appearance might raise the profile of their modest restaurant.

The meal in the last act of Big Night is unquestionably one of the greatest culinary spectacles ever committed to film, but it’s the finale — a wordless scene where Secondo tries to repair the damage from the night before by cooking an omelet for his brother and the prep cook —that feels like the real heart of the film. It gets me every time.

Big Night is not always perfect: Tucci and Shalhoub occasionally verge on sitcom territory with their acting choices, and it’s a shame that co-stars Minnie Driver, Allison Janney, and Isabella Rossellini don’t have more to work with here. But the overall experience of watching Big Night is something akin to being presented with the timpano featured in the film: It’s a big jumble of stray ingredients that seamlessly blend together to form something totally unique.

I shamelessly picked Big Night for my final Eat, Drink, Watch newsletter because seeing this movie during its original run completely shaped my understanding of the restaurant world. I’d always had a passing interest in food and cooking, but after watching Primo and Secondo try to reverse their fortunes at Paradise, I became obsessed with the stories behind the restaurants I loved, and the unique relationships that exist between chefs, restaurateurs, diners, and critics.

Thirteen years after seeing Big Night for the first time, I got a job here at Eater covering the drama of the restaurant scene, and now, almost 10 years after my first Eater byline, I’m leaving this publication — and the food media world — to pursue a new, and very different opportunity at a Bay Area start-up. I’ve learned so much over the years, and I’m lucky to have worked with so many great people. And while part of me is sad to be departing the world of 24/7 restaurant obsession, I’m also looking forward to following all the action now as a reader and member of the Eat, Drink, Watch Facebook group .

It occured to me while rewatching Big Night that Hollywood’s interest in food has increased by leaps and bounds since the release of the film, and especially in the decade since I started working here at Eater. Now, if you want to learn about the inner workings of a restaurant or the secrets to good cooking, you don’t need to flip on the Food Network or hope to catch a movie like Big Nigh t on TV — you instantly can summon Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat , Chef’s Table , The Great British Baking Show , Ugly Delicious , Parts Unknown , Taco Chronicles , or Eater’s series with PBS, No Passport Required . There may not be another indie gem like Big Night on the horizon — the movie business is so different now — but there’s no doubt in my mind that the food TV scene is just going to keep getting better.

Big Night is available to stream on YouTube , Amazon , iTunes , and Google Play .

In other entertainment news…

• Carl Ruiz, a New York-area chef who frequently appeared alongside Guy Fieri on his Food Network shows, died last weekend . He was 44.
• Here’s screenwriter John Carcieri explaining why the Righteous Gemstones always eat at the same steakhouse buffet.
• Even though they’re rich and famous, celebrity chefs often have a hard time keeping restaurants open for very long.
• I was really rooting for Sandra Lee and Andrew Cuomo, but alas, they have separated .
• Jennifer Lawrence is now recommending kitchen appliances on Amazon .
• Speaking of Amazon, the commerce titan is partnering with Food Network on a new $7 a month subscription version of the cable channel that will include live cooking demonstrations from people like Ina Garten, Bobby Flay, and Guy Fieri.
• And finally, Jimmy Fallon is the kind of guy who shares his surprise birthday ice cream cake with everyone else at the restaurant.

Have a great weekend everyone, and thanks so much for reading Eat, Drink, Watch.

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The Big Night

One of the year’s major revivals, of the Wisconsin-born director Joseph Losey’s 1976 French drama, “Monsieur Klein,” has its roots in the McCarthy era. Losey, a leading Hollywood filmmaker of the postwar years, was blacklisted in 1951 and left the United States for exile in Europe. His final studio movie, “The Big Night,” a rarely screened film noir, is one of many obscure gems streaming on Amazon Prime; it displays the sort of scathing critique of American society that, at the time of its release, led to trouble. John Barrymore, Jr., stars as George, a Los Angeles teen-ager who sees his father (Preston Foster), a bartender, brutally beaten by a well-known sportswriter (Howard St. John); George steals his father’s gun and decides to get revenge. The young man’s ramble through L.A.’s seamy night life reveals the period’s rank ideological foundations—an undercurrent of ethnic and racial hatred and an entrenched mythology of masculinity that gives rise to secrets, lies, and violence. Losey’s nerve-jangling style matches the subject: his images’ crisscrossing and striated lines evoke George’s unresolved tangle of conscience and identity. (Amazon Prime.)

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‘Big Night’: A Feast of Fine Character

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As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, “Big Night” is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting. Written and directed by actors for themselves and their friends, it is a sensual feast that understands, as great chefs do, the virtues of taking its time.

Featuring a pair of competing Italian restaurants, “Big Night,” like “Babette’s Feast,” “Like Water for Chocolate” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” before it, capitalizes on the increasing overlap between the audiences for independent films and sophisticated restaurants. Putting beautiful food on the screen is a sure-fire way to everyone’s heart.

Set in the late 1950s on the New Jersey shore, “Big Night” is savvy enough to toss in a clever bit of audience flattery. It unveils the Paradise, whose muted decor and emphasis on risotto and radicchio make it the dream restaurant for 1990s palates, and locates it amid Eisenhower-era philistines who insist on spaghetti and meatballs and don’t understand when Secondo, the restaurant’s maitre d’, tells them “sometimes spaghetti wants to be alone.”

Secondo is convincingly played by Stanley Tucci, best known for a recurring role in TV’s “Murder One.” Tucci originated the project, co-wrote the script with his cousin Joseph Tropiano, and got old-friend Campbell Scott to co-direct as well as take a small part. He even used the timpano, the signature dish of his grandparent’s area of Calabria, as the film’s culinary centerpiece.

Secondo and his older brother, Primo (Tony Shalhoub), have emigrated from Italy determined to make a success of the restaurant business in America. But their greatest asset, Primo’s genius behind the stove, turns out to be a major impediment as well.

For Primo is a finicky perfectionist who refuses to lower his standards. Though continually shocked at American eating habits (“a criminal” is his take on a woman who orders spaghetti and risotto), Primo believes “if you give people time, they will learn.”

Secondo, for his part, knows that time is fleeting. Eager for conventional, Cadillac-owning American success, he has to contend not only with his brother, but also an impatient bank determined to foreclose on the Paradise because of inconsistent loan payments.

Though it tends to be overshadowed by all the food, one of “Big Night’s” strongest elements is the volatile, contentious relationship between Primo and Secondo, brothers who care enough to want to strangle each other. Smartly penned by Tucci and Tropiano (who won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance), their interplay typifies the film’s wonderful ear for accented speech, for the unintentionally poetic musings of people struggling with a language not their own.

Making things harder for Secondo is the presence just down the street of the thriving Pascal’s Italian Grotto, the ultimate 1950s Italian restaurant, bathed in red lights like a bordello and boasting celebrity photographs on the walls and the glamorous Gabriella (Isabella Rossellini) as the hostess.

Pascal himself, introduced flambeing a dish for dazzled customers, is an effusive torrent of bogus emotions, a hyperactive operator given to screaming “I love this guy” whenever Secondo walks in the door. Played with splendid verve and panache by Ian Holm, Pascal gives “Big Night” the jolts of energy it would be weaker without.

Though Primo hates him (“The man should be in prison for the food he serves” is his mildest rebuke), Secondo envies his rival’s success, and when Pascal offers to help the brothers out by convincing celebrated musician Louis Prima to dine at the Paradise, he accepts, and preparations for the big night of the title are begun.

Also invited to this meal-of-meals is everyone the film has carefully introduced so far, including Secondo’s girlfriend, Phyllis (Minnie Driver), the flower shop owner Primo is fond of (Allison Janney) and an unusual Cadillac salesman (an assured cameo by co-director Scott).

Though “Big Night’s” plot points don’t always pay off, the care that has been taken to establish and develop character add interest and human concern to the elaborate meal that follows. Because we care about the people who are present at the feast, as dish follows dish on screen we feel the film is sharing its bounty with us as well.

Warmhearted at its core but too intelligent not to have a bit of bittersweet bite as well, “Big Night” carefully avoids the overindulgence toward performance that frequently sinks actors’ movies. It’s a mark of how successful this talented ensemble has been that when Primo utters the film’s signature line, “To eat good food is to be close to God,” no one will feel in need of further convincing.

* MPAA rating: R, for language. Times guidelines: thematically unobjectionable.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘Big Night’

Stanley Tucci: Secondo

Tony Shalhoub: Primo

Ian Holm: Pascal

Isabella Rossellini: Gabriella

Minnie Driver: Phyllis

A Timpano production, presented by Rysher Entertainment, released by the Samuel Goldwyn Company. Directors Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott. Producer Jonathan Filley. Executive producers Keith Samples, David Kirkpatrick. Screenplay Stanley Tucci & Joseph Tropiano. Cinematographer Ken Kelsch. Editor Suzy Elmiger. Costumes Juliet A. Polcsa. Music Gary DeMichele. Production design Andrew Jackness. Art directors Jeffrey D. McDonald, David Stein. Set decorator Susan Raney. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

* At selected theaters throughout Southern California.

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• Critics 97% 59

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On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 56 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The performances in Big Night are wonderful, and the food looks delicious." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

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Critique: 5

By the end of the movie, we have been through an emotional and a sensual wringer, in a film of great wisdom and delight.

When it comes to seeing Big Night, two words say it all: Bon appetite!

As delicately and deliciously prepared as the dishes it features, Big Night is a lyric to the love of food, family and persuasive acting.

An actor for sophisticated palates, Tucci’s too good to stay obscure any longer.

A small movie – and that’s its subtle charm.

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Inside the New West Village Boutique Making Every Day an Occasion 

Precious morsels of caviar brined to perfection, creamy hand-molded Beurre de Baratte butter from Normandy, and piquant mussels marinated Spanish-style with the unlikely companion of sweet kombu seaweed. What might sound like a motley first course at New York’s next latest eatery is just one-quarter of a tightly-curated shelf at Big Night , which opens the double doors of its second location this week. 

“Not every night is a dinner party, but any night can be a Big Night,” is the mantra behind the colorful concept store, explains Katherine Lewin, who took a risk when she founded it nearly two years ago. “I had no clue what I was doing at the time,” she admits, “but I learned a lot in the process.” Born in Los Angeles and raised in Austin, Texas, Lewin previously worked as editorial director of the restaurant recommendation site The Infatuation, eating her way around all of New York City’s boroughs most nights of the week. When she decided to step down from her role in July of 2021, it was to dedicate herself to the community she missed the most: the loved ones she once regularly hosted around her dinner table. 

A stone’s throw from Lewin’s long-time Greenpoint home, Big Night opened a month later, and has quickly become the Brooklyn neighborhood’s go-to for all and any dinner party needs; a place where grand and gorgeous objects sit beside lesser-known, local treasures. On its shelves—which are doused in a fiery, Bloody Mary red—are retro wire fruit bowls straight from MoMA’s Design Store and psychedelic tinted glassware by the beloved designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen. On one counter, you’ll find confetti-stained cutting boards from Fredericks and Mae, while delicacies from the founder’s favorite New York menus—like Lumache pasta from Nolita staple Rubirosa and light mezze spreads from Lighthouse in Williamsburg—sit on another. Fittingly, a hand-poured candle named “Dinner Party,” which perfectly balances arugula, basil, and lemongrass with amber, saffron, and musky wood, has remained one of Big Night’s best-selling items. “I didn’t feel like there was a place quite like us,” Lewin recalls of the store’s early days. “I had an idea of what the product mix might be in my head, but I was really just hoping people would like some of it.”

By the time it came to plan her third home—more specifically, the second Big Night outpost—Lewin was aware of the importance of living inside the neighborhood she was catering to, and settled on a Jane Street sublet for herself, a short wander from the early 1900s storefront on West 10th Street that had accidentally stolen her heart. “Oh shit,” she remembers thinking when she first saw the Downtown Manhattan space where Big Night West Village now lives. The fact that it was once—in one of its many former lives—a residential unit made the decision a no-brainer. Working with Erica Padgett of Decorum Design Build, Lewin set out to return the space to its domestic roots while retaining many of its historical details.  

Indeed, moving through the renovated space three times the size of its Brooklyn sister, you’re quickly struck by the sheer breadth of the offering, which caters to a whole range of special occasions. “There’s so much life that’s been lived in here,” says Lewin from an impressive wrap-around breakfast bar that, in true Manhattan fashion, has several functions: check-out station, display surface, and dining room table. Beneath a recycled paper pendant lamp by Menu shaped like an inverted flower in full bloom, the custom-built bar features beautifully-preserved brass panes along with vibrant Smink Studios ceramic tiles sourced from Portugal. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lewin says, pointing to one customized square in Big Night’s preferred bright-red hue. It’s a motif that continues throughout the store, though each room has a distinctly colorful experience, along with wall-to-wall built-in units filled with an eclectic array of products. These are filled with original art by the likes of Olive Panter and Mia Johnson, as well as collaborations with artists like Anja Riebensahm and Edith Young.

Meanwhile, Big Night West Village’s pantry marks the debut of its freezer section, where ice cream from New York locals like Malai, Bad Habit, and Noona join the store’s assortment of rare and revered perishables. That’s not the only expansion of Big Night’s offering, either. Next door, in the midnight-blue powder room, Lewin has dipped her toes into self-care with Noto, a gender inclusive-line of beauty essentials along with striped bath towels from Dusen Dusen and waffle editions from Hawkins New York. The kitchen, which alone is almost the same size as Big Night’s founding location, introduces cookware for the first time, with millennial favorites from Material and Great Jones sitting beside vintage cutlery sourced by Lewin’s mother from around the midwest, and linens by Misette. The glassware—a mix of Maison Balzac's dotted tumblers, balloon-style wine stems from Jacobsen, contemporary pieces from Hudson Wilder, and archival finds—spill over into a seductive cocktail bar drenched in oxtail red, representing the evolution of the brand as it crosses the Williamsburg Bridge.

Speaking of the elephant in the room (an animal that once passed through the lens of Big Night would inevitably appear as some sort of vintage Italian figurine), how will the neighborhood store’s new additions fare in an entirely new locale? Lewin, now well into her stint as a temporary West Village resident, is hopeful. “I’m excited for people’s feedback,” she says, citing its caviar as an unlikely case study. The offering was inspired by a random customer inquiry, and now Big Night co-produces it with New York-based Pearl Street Caviar. “I can’t wait to find out what we’re missing.”

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The Big Night Reviews

The Big Night is so slow, murkily lit, and incoherently involved with the meek pantomime of John Barrymore, Jr., that it might make more sense if the reels were run backward.

Full Review | Sep 15, 2021

Losey's nerve-jangling style matches the subject: his images' crisscrossing and striated lines evoke George's unresolved tangle of conscience and identity.

Full Review | Dec 2, 2019

Neither juvenile delinquent drama or a wild youth thriller, this is a portrait in rage and shame and disappointment in fathers and father figures.

Full Review | May 4, 2012

Apparently everybody was concerned with theatrical effects and forgot all about a story with point and intelligence.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Feb 10, 2007

An hysterical melodrama posing as a film noir due to the dark underworld it inhabits.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 7, 2007

October 8, 1997 An Actor Whose Talents Are the Sum of His Parts Related Article Additional New York Times Film Reviews Forum Join a Discussion on Movies By JANET MASLIN verything about "Boogie Nights" is interestingly unexpected, even the few seconds of darkness before the film's neon title blasts onto the screen. The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, whose display of talent is as big and exuberant as skywriting, seems to mean this as a way of telling viewers to brace themselves. Good advice. Some of the most distinctive American films of recent years -- "Pulp Fiction," "The People vs. Larry Flynt," "L.A. Confidential" and now this one -- have invoked a sleaze-soaked Southern California as an evilly alluring nexus of decadence and pop culture. "Boogie Nights" further ratchets up the raunchiness by taking porn movies and drug problems entirely for granted, and by fondly embracing a collection of characters who do the same. The film's unofficial family group is immersed in exploitation movies, which becomes the same collective eccentricity that country music was for "Nashville." Anderson, who begins his film spectacularly with a version of the great Copacabana shot from "Goodfellas," has no qualms about borrowing from the best. As the camera roams with incredible agility through a disco in the San Fernando Valley (in a long, bravura shot that Anderson apparently rehearsed and filmed in a single night), the movie introduces all of its major characters with thrilling ease. The godfather of this motley group is Jack Horner, porn auteur. ("Before you turn around you've spent maybe 20, 25, 30 thousand dollars on a movie!") Burt Reynolds rises to this occasion by giving his best and most suavely funny performance in many years. Like Jerry Lewis in "The King of Comedy," he gives the role an extra edge by playing a swaggering, self-important figure very close to the bone. In the disco on that first night, Jack's eyes alight on a busboy named Eddie, whom he pronounces "a 17-year-old piece of gold." Eddie, who has already learned to peddle himself to $10 customers, will soon become Jack's new star, thanks to his exceptional anatomy, about which he says, "Everyone's blessed with one special thing." The movie's special gift happens to be Mark Wahlberg, who gives a terrifically appealing performance in this tricky role. Wahlberg must do many things here: attract all the film's other characters, rise credibly from naive kid to arrogant cokehead, behave as if he thinks Dirk Diggler (Eddie's nom de porn) is a really grand name. He does all this with captivating ingenuousness and not a single false move. Eddie's room in his parents' unhappy home is covered with posters: bathing beauties, sports cars, martial arts, all the elements of his particular American dream. The movie's first hour watches him attain all this during the course of a hot, meteoric rise. Anderson has great fun with the mundaneness of his porn filmmakers, who remain unflappable almost all of the time, except for when they first see Eddie take off his pants. "Boogie Nights" doesn't depict much nudity or sex (except during a lengthy sequence showing Eddie's first movie scene), but does make its point with sly, expert reaction shots of crew members watching Eddie, um, act. Among his colleagues: Julianne Moore, wonderful as the vaguely lost soul whom Jack has transformed into a porn queen (her studiously bad acting in movie-making scenes is perfect); Don Cheadle as the aspiring cowboy who is much too nice for porn stardom; William Macy, in a wig borrowed from the Partridge Family, as the crew member whose wife enjoys embarrassing him most unmistakably; Philip Seymour Hoffman as Eddie's most ardent admirer; Robert Ridgely as the shady financier who, like Jack Horner, is so discreetly excited by young talent; Ricky Jay as the unflappable cameraman, and John C. Reilly as Eddie's main sidekick in this wild new world. Reilly had a major role in "Hard Eight," the 27-year-old director's only previous feature, which was slow and stagy in ways that gave no inkling of this. The film, which begins in 1977 (just in time for a dancing "Saturday Night Fever" homage), casually incorporates such milestones as Dirk Diggler's virtual baptism in a hot tub and the New Year's Eve gunfire that ends the 1970s with a bang. Then it's downhill, as video changes the porn world, and drugs transform its stars. On the night when Eddie literally runs out of gas, Alfred Molina embodies total drug insanity as a rich, out-of-control freebaser who is the target of a robbery attempt. His terrifying meltdown announces once and for all, in a movie full of show-stopping party sequences, that the party's over. Yet the film's many intimations of how badly this bubble will burst, in a story drawn loosely from the career of the porn star John Holmes, never really coalesce. And since Anderson shows no interest in passing judgment on his characters, the film's extravagant 2-hour 32-minute length amounts to a slight tactical mistake. "Boogie Nights" has no trouble holding interest; far from it. But the length promises larger ideas than the film finally delivers. Unlike "Nashville," this crowded, entertaining ensemble film doesn't aspire to any epiphany. Anderson just sees a lot of good stories in this particular naked city, and he wants to tell them, with enormous flair. So "Boogie Nights" invests much attention in enjoyable surface details: a Greek chorus of a jukebox ("Oh what a lonely boy!" sings a pop song when the son of Ms. Moore's character can't reach his mother at a party), witty film parodies, perfect period ephemera and flashy costumes that are an evil treat. . Anderson also has a fine ear for dialogue, especially at such absurd moments as when Eddie compares himself to Napoleon "in the Roman Empire" or when two coked-up porn actresses madly extol the joys of taking a pottery class. Madness it was. And now it is madly well preserved, forever after. "Boogie Nights," this year's fireworks event at the New York Film Festival, will be shown there Wednesday at 6 p.m. and Friday at 9 p.m. Its commercial run begins on Sunday. PRODUCTION NOTES: 'BOOGIE NIGHTS' Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson; director of photography, Robert Elswitt; edited by Dylan Tichenor; music by Michael Penn; production designer, Bob Ziembicki; produced by Lloyd Levin, John Lyons, Anderson and Joanne Sellar; released by New Line Cinema. With: Mark Wahlberg (Dirk Diggler), Julianne Moore (Amber Waves), Burt Reynolds (Jack Homer), Don Cheadle (Buck Swope), John C. Reilly (Reed Rothchild), William H. Macy (Little Bill), Robert Ridgely (the Colonel), Ricky Jay (Kurt Longjohn), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Scotty) and Alfred Molina (Rahad Jackson). Shown at Alice Tully Hall in New York, as part of the 35th New York Film Festival. Running time: 152 minutes. This film is not rated.