You are not your job. You are not the money in your bank account. You are not the car you drive. You are not how much money is in your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.
A review by Mike Shea Movie Rating: ( * * * * * ) DVD Rating: ( * * * * * )
Read Mike's Comparison of Fight Club to American Beauty.
Fight Club may be one of the best movies in recent times. I am thinking I have written that for other reviews recently and it just goes to show you what a good year for movies it was. Films like Being John Malkovich, Three Kings and American Beauty all go to show you just how good movies can be.Fight club got a really bad reputation from the critics and the press as a violent movie that spawned a bunch of copycat crimes. This couldn't be further from the truth. The previews and stories about this movie are all false. This movie isn't about bare knuckle boxing or about blood and violence. It is about the insanity of the mass market consumer world we live in and how one man, with a totem animal he meets on a plane, tries to break out with disastrous results. Ed Norton is becoming one of my favorite actors with great movies like American History X and Rounders under his belt. Brad Pitt does his usual best with a role that is like a more hard core version of his character in 12 Monkeys. A sure far cry from the lame ass woman lightening rod he played in the cheesy chick-flick Meet Joe Black. The level of insanity he plays out meets no bounds nor does his level of subtle humor.
The details of this movie are excellent, but I can't give them away without taking away their magic. Needless to say I was happy to have the DVD version to watch more than once. The second act of the movie starts to go south a bit, with the army of space monkeys causing mischief and mayhem, fighting with the kind of conformity they were breaking away from, but the ending more than makes up for it.
The DVD takes top prize for special editions, with Brazil losing the position for its lack of a 16x9 enhanced picture. It is a two disc boxed set that includes over four different commentary tracks with the director and lead actors among others, a set of deleted scenes, an alternate ending, behind the scenes footage, making of features and enough other extras to fill up a whole second DVD. The picture as I mentioned is a 2.40 to 1 16x9 enhanced transfer with a very solid Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. It is an excellent package and a collectors dream.
This movie is definitely one not to be missed. Some of the more sensitive viewers might cringe at the blood, but if you can get through it, you will witness one of the best movies in the last ten years.
From: Mike ( mshea@liquidtheater.com ) on 13 July 2000
Subject: Fight Club Revisited
Why is it that when we try to hold a movie or a current day book we are assaulted with the literature of our past as if it is the end all be all of higher thinking? Fight Club is a perfect example of a movie that gives a hard thick message on society as we know it. In many years to come, Fight Club can be looked at as a period piece that shows how futile our lives are in this day in age. It shows that 200 years of forced social values cannot stop 2 million years of instinct. That whatever car we drive, whatever we have in our bank account, we are animals. We have lost touch with what it means to have to fight to survive. In a world where we see beautiful actors dancing, drinking and procreating next to advertisements for sandwiches with 800 calories and 38 grams of fat, what kind of message are we supposed to be getting? How are we supposed to live? What are we as a people giving back to our society when we live in a world of buggy Microsoft products and four dollar coffees with five names? Fight Club is a movie that was hammered for being violent, even when movies like Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart are given top honors with violence never seen on the screen before. Why? Braveheart and Ryan were movies with easily accepted messages. War is bad. Ooh, tough message! Fight Club has a much harder message that scares almost everyone who sees it, including myself. That doesn't mean we should label the movie as "violent" or "dangerous". We should think about the message. Accept it or toss it away, but do not try to hide it. While we shouldn't start burning smile faces into office buildings or castrate a mayor, we should think about what society is telling us when it shows a beautiful 103 pound blonde model holding a Big Mac and tells us to "eat".
From: Mike ( mshea@liquidtheater.com ) on 4 July 2000
Subject: Interview with Fichner
There is an excellent interview with David Fichner, the director of Fight Club and the producer of the DVD, David Britton Prior in this month's Widescreen Review (issue 40). There is a lot of interesting information and opinions of special editions by Fichner, one of which is high praise for 16x9 enhanced transfers. There is also some good info on the use of super 35 vs panorama lenses as well as other cool insider tips. There isn't an internet version of the article unfortunatly.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You are free to copy, distribute, display, and make derivative works under the conditions that you give the original author credit and you not use this work for commercial purposes.
From: Wildtech ( wildtech@yahoo.com ) on 15 July 2000
Subject: nahh
A persons opionon of mankind is only as good as his own op. of himself.
I think the movie is about searching for something that is missing in their lifes. They can't find it and be able to fill it with violence. Not much different then filling it with drugs, alchol, sex, whatever. People do it all the time and violence is no more sane of a solution. Of course some people go through there life content and have no need to search. . .of course you could always sleep in sunday mornings.