Review of Fight Club

I have fully decided that one of the greatest things to bring into a movie is the complete lack of knowledge of anything about it. I heard about the movie Fight Club about 4 hours before I went to see it. Tony told me Stryker said it was really good and Brad Pitt and Ed Norton were in it. That's about all I knew about it going into the theater. Well, here's what I have to say about it without being a hypocrite and blurting out any important details to you (I'm assuming about 95% of you haven't seen it) to make you enjoy it less: The very first scene put a giddy excited smile on my face and it stuck there through the whole movie and about an hour or so afterward. The first half hour was an almost completely first person narration with an anything goes directing philosophy that came across like a tidal wave of sarcastic cynicism and well-timed anarchy. Every shot had me suppressing laughter as to not A) disturb the loads of other people in the theater, and B) look like a 12-year-old girl at a Back Street Boys concert. David Fincher, who also directed Seven and The Game, took his own methods of manipulation and exploitation and exploited and manipulated them, exposing them to the audience to draw attention to the filmmaking process, which makes it even cooler for me, being an ex-film student and all. Even if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, you'll come out of it thinking, "that was neat!"

After the film had established its character (a wimpy Cameron from Ferris Bueller type character), it started in with the plot, which was basically that Ed Norton (Cameron) meets this guy on a plane (Brad Pitt) and they start this underground testosterone party called the Fight Club where guys beat the crap out of each other to feel manly. But it turns into much more than that. You follow the characters through their changes and find yourself agreeing with things you wouldn't normally agree with. Then the last half hour happens. There are some over the top gore scenes that might scare you away if they ever show that as part of the preview, but don't pay attention to them if you're not into that kind of stuff. The entire film had an important plot twist every 2-3 minutes which kept me on my seat constantly. This last half hour though, really made the film happen. All the freaky time-lapse and slow motion shots with the strategically placed bouts of subliminality come together and grow tenfold both in number and importance. Formalism is the relation of form to content, and Fincher took the last half hour of that script and found the exact way to convey it on the screen. You especially notice this crap when you actually try to do it, which I did once. But his direction was phenomenal and it earned the film all 10 bugs and an additional half of a partially swallowed bug. It's that good folks, trust me.

When making fun of clever people, it is important to have a second comeback to their first comeback. I wasn't prepared for this one. I made fun of Jeff Horton during that same game of beer pong he was losing...


Quote Of the Day 10/15/99

"Hey. Why don't you just go do a split or puke on my carpet or something."
-Jeff Horton


Hearing Whos,
Dr. Moose.


Still Standing Right Here...