Unpleasant Million Dollar Hotel

NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

If you wanted to see a film set in skid row then "Night at the Golden Eagle" is the film for you. Seeped and drenched in solarized, sepia colors, "Night at the Golden Eagle" is an attempt to see the seamier side of life. I don't object to such films unless there is no core of humanity or degree of human sensibility. The Golden Eagle hotel is not a place I'd spend a night in.

The film is set in an L.A. fleabag hotel, the kind where those with lost dreams reside (think "Million Dollar Hotel"). One of the dreamers is Mic (Vinny Argiro), a former crook who wants to live the good life in Vegas. He's reunited with another former crook, Tommy (Donnie Montemarano), who's just gotten out of jail and his first thought is to steal a car. The hotel they stay in is festering with all forms of lowlifes and dreamers to be sure. There is a sneering pimp (Vinnie Jones from "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"), two hookers (Ann Magnuson and Natasha Lyonne), a former tap-dancing legend, Fayard Nicholas, another lost soul who spends an eternity watching TV in the lobby, and I am afraid to say, not much more.

"Night at the Golden Eagle" doesn't aim to dwell into these hotel guests because the characters are nothing more than types, not real people. I like some of the camaraderie and growing friction between Mic and Tommy and their aspirations to live the good life in Sin City, but they never grow beyond the one-dimensional stage.When a murder takes place that involves one of these crooks, their growing banter quickly becomes tedious because we barely care about them (and one of them could care less about the murder). The prostitutes, including a pubescent girl, are reduced to fodder for those who think prostitutes are not real people. In fact, writer-director Adam Rifkin doesn't invest much emotion into anyone - they are all stereotypes who have as much purpose as several chia pets on a window sill. Either Rifkin is afraid to explore the nature of his subjects or he'd rather just shock the audience - the latter is common amongst young filmmakers today in light of the ironic edge every noir film seems to possess.

I do not resent a film that intends to present a time and place and nothing more. But even in plotless films such as, for lack of a better example, Godard's "Breathless" or Fellini's "8 1/2" or Scorsese's "Mean Streets," the people populating those films inspired some curiosity, some level of interest. In "Night of the Golden Eagle, the characters of the mean streets of L.A. would be better off occupying a video game, not a movie. "Grand Theft Auto," anyone?

Shoot it in 3 days, or else!

CORMAN'S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL (2011)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It is often forgotten that Roger Corman helped launch the careers of many distinguished actors and directors back in the day. The king of B movies has also been active himself for more than 60 years, ranging from producing and directing sci-fi to fantasy to action exploitation pictures to even a couple of "social message films." "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" aims to paint a flattering portrait of a low-budget producer who already made his 100th film by the time "The Wild Angels" was out in cinemas in 1966.

"Corman's World" covers a lot of ground as it explores the business mind behind what became the staple of low-budget filmmaking. Making a film on a shoestring budget in 3 days, and using leftover sets to make another entire picture in practically the same amount of time, is the stuff of legend and the kind of quick-thinking and on-the-nose business sense that most other independent filmmakers could only hope to aspire to. Roger Corman's list of credits are practically legendary, from having helmed cult classics such as the original "Little Shop of Horrors" to (one of my favorites) "The Terror" which starred Boris Karloff and an early performance by Jack Nicholson, not to mention "The Cry-Baby Killer"; "Piranha"; adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe including "The Pit and the Pendulum"; "Deathsport"; "Grand Theft Auto"; "Bloody Mama," and too many more to list (400-plus total). Most intriguing is the segment dealing with the controversial 1962's "The Intruder," showcasing a young William Shatner as a racist who tries to stop integration of schools in the segregated Missouri. The film was a box-office failure, one of the few exceptions in Corman's filmography, but it did hint at Corman's willingness to go beyond just sheer exploitation. He was also instrumental in getting foreign films noticed through his company New World Pictures, with films like Ingmar Bergman's "Cries and Whispers" and Federico Fellini's "Amarcord" (some of these films were actually shown at drive-ins!)

"Corman's World" features dynamite, in-depth interviews from luminaries such as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese (who correctly identifies Corman's work as a different kind of "art"), Joe Dante, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, David Carradine, and even Corman's own wife, Julie. All lavish nothing but praise for a man who was anything but the stereotype of a cigar-chomping, boorish producer - Roger simply knew how to get the best out of actors and directors and hoped they would migrate to "A" movies.

There is a brief, honest and rather mind-blowing section dealing with how Hollywood megahits of the mid-to-late 70's, ostensibly B movies in their own right like "Jaws" and "Star Wars," made huge profits with bigger budgets, eradicating the low-budget model set by Roger Corman and eviscerating the drive-in market. It is upsetting and as Corman astutely pinpoints, there is no reason to spend millions on a movie when the same money could be used in an utilitarian way, such as saving a slum and rebuilding a neighborhood. Now, the old low-budget B movies go direct to DVD or show up on Syfy channel, where Corman makes his mark on occasion. Interestingly, actor's salaries are not discussed, and we all know how much money Jack Nicholson made from his role in Tim Burton's "Batman" (a movie Corman could've directed in about the amount of time it would take for Burton to get his haircut).

If I have to nitpick, I wish there was time devoted to Corman's last directorial effort, "Frankenstein Unbound," one of the most fascinating Frankenstein adaptations ever (based on a terrific novel by Brian Aldiss). Also, his 1994 "Fantastic Four" film (heavily lambasted by comic fans at conventions) could've used a little exposure. These films and many others showed Roger Corman was a force to be reckoned with, a man who loved movies and loved making them. It showed, and it explains why Jack Nicholson sheds a tear for his old mentor. 

Martian warriors destroy Rover

GHOSTS OF MARS (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2002)

The great John Carpenter film awaits a cinema near you. "Halloween," "Assault on Precinct 13," "In the Mouth of Madness" and "Starman" were a few stellar examples but mostly we have been saddled with fascinating experiments like "Village of the Damned," "The Thing" and grave disappointments like "Prince of Darkness" and "Vampires." And like it or not, Carpenter knows how to use his resources to stir and entertain when he does it right. "Ghosts of Mars" is no classic by any stretch of the imagination but it is a marked improvement over "Vampires" and has some nifty ideas and fun performances.

Essentially a western taking place on the planet Mars, we have Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) and other members of a police force including Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier) and Bashira Kincaid (Clea Duvall) as they travel by train to some mining colony where a supposedly notorious killer, "Destination" Williams, is being held (played by Ice Cube, who continues to surprise me in every film role). Oh, lest we forget there is a male in this small police force played by Jason Statham ("Snatch") who makes sexual remarks to Lt. Ballard at his every convenience. Meanwhile, just as Ballard's force is ready to take Williams and bring him to justice, a force is unleashed that awakens Martian warriors who love to decapitate humans and shout as loudly as Ozzy Osbourne. These ghosts have the ability of taking over the minds of the miners on this colony and all hell breaks loose. Lots of gunfire and karate kicks ensue.

"Ghosts of Mars" should not be mistaken for an intellectual sci-fi film but rather an in-your-face action melodrama with lots of special effects. One of the best effects scenes takes place when an archaeologist, Professor Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy), crash lands on the possessed colony in her air balloon. I also love all the train scenes since they are the quietest scenes in the movie, allowing us to explore the characters' personalities and interaction. For a while, the film aims to be a character-oriented update of "Assault on Precinct 13" by way of Howard Hawks's "Rio Bravo" but when the action scenes start, they take over the movie and become the focus. Nothing wrong with that though I never really thought of Carpenter as an action director, despite his "Escape to New York." His talent lies in horror and some scenes inside the mines made me jump.

On a fundamental level, "Ghosts of Mars" is lots of fun to watch and has commanding actors at the forefront (though I found it cruel to see Duvall and Grier given such short-shrift in their roles). Henstridge plays a woman of authority and strong will and Ice Cube gets to show what a continuingly strong presence he has on screen - both characters could stand on their own as the leads of a movie. Maybe in the sequel.

Run Baby Run

THE WARD (2010)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is no doubt that a horror movie about a mental ward facility has been done before. Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor" is the most horrific and scariest example, along with a semi-remake of sorts, "Shutter Island" (though the latter is based on an equally creepy novel). Novel twist endings at such wards are not an uncommon practice - we have seen them before and can predict them with ease. So can director John Carpenter make it sing, or sink? He makes it sing. "The Ward" is an elegant, frightful horror flick done with the brio of a real master, and among Carpenter's best films since "In the Mouth of Madness."

Amber Heard is a traumatized woman running away from something, though we are not sure what. She burns down a farmhouse in the opening scene where something clearly traumatic had occurred there.  Cut to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital where Heard, playing a woman named Kristen, is held in a mental ward along with four other troubled girls. Kristen doesn't want to be at the loony bin (pardon the parlance) but then again, what mental patient doesn't say such things?  The other girls who hope to be promptly released include: Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca), a sketch artist; Zoey (Laura-Leigh), a near-mute who clutches a stuffed doll and suffers from arrested development;  Emily (Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter), the toughie who taunts the others, and Sarah (Danielle Panabaker) who tries to woo one of the orderlies. All of them seem to come out of the 60's period though more modern Amber Heard look a little out of place, or maybe that is the idea. Rounding out the rest of the hospital's small staff includes Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris), who tries to help his patients yet is not above providing shock treatment (remember, this film is set in 1966). Oh, and there is a Nurse Ratched as well, but she is hardly as wretched.

Some may see "The Ward" as "Identity" crossed with "Girl, Interrupted" spiked with an extra touch of malice. I see it as John Carpenter's return to form, providing us with a dank, almost forbidden sense of atmosphere and a few well-executed scares that really come out of nowhere. Most important is that Carpenter and writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen makes us care for all the female patients - we cling to them and hope that Kristen, in particular, gets away. "The Ward" also throws in moments that toy with us a little, like the girls dancing to the Newbeats' "Run, Baby, Run." The movie, though not as wholly original or as striking in its visual design as "Shock Corridor" or "Shutter Island," is a welcome return to horror that is neither geeky nor full of grisly, gratuitous gore. Instead, it will make your skin crawl.

Take pills, feel nicer

TERRI (2011)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is a heavy-set high-school kid who is indifferent to his surroundings. When he walks to school, he dresses in pajamas and angrily tosses his knapsack on the field. When Terri is home, he cares for his Uncle James (Creed Bratton) who needs his meds to stay sharp, but otherwise the old man is an emotionless vegetable. Terri also plants mouse traps in his house and reads "Gulliver's Travels." Anything, one would assume, to bring some light into this dreary world.

"Terri" is the kind of independent picture that I have heard people groan on about. It is small-town life where everything is offbeat and where "stuff happens" that could only appeal to those who have outgrown Hollywood fantasies. Only "Terri" deals with details of small-town life and high-school in an implicit comical manner. Take the character of Heather (Olivia Crocicchia), a young girl who succumbs to getting fingered during cooking class by a male high-school student. There is something funny about the fact that this girl thinks such a public act of indecency wouldn't induce wandering eyes, especially Terri's. When Terri has to visit the assistant principal once a week (the principal is played by John C. Reilly), the school official occasionally wears shades and mimics shouting at his students to please his slowly- withering-away secretary.

Most of the film "Terri" tells its story in an unhurried and very matter-of-factly manner. One extended sequence stands out where Terri, Heather and another troubled outcast, Chad (Bridger Zadina), drink some whisky and take some pills to feel "nicer." It is a startling sequence because it is a bit unsettling and we think it will end one way, and it does not. No scene in "Terri" ever feels insincere or out of place or predictable. When Terri decides to defend Heather in class, he picks up a pair of sunglasses and mimics an embarrassing TV commercial pitch.

Terri himself begins to see change in his own life when he develops three new friendships, especially with the sympathetic assistant principal. Only the film is not willing to see that change as life-affirming or earth-shakingly revolutionary, merely a stepping stone. As a film, "Terri" is filled with small pleasures and one wishes there was more, more time spent with any of these intimate characters. As written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, the running time feels like it is just enough of a stepping stone to a greater film. The fact that I wanted more is the mark of a real talent, who genuinely loves his characters and empathizes with them.

Mickey and Mallory's love beats the demon

NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

20th anniversary - An appreciation

In 1994, I sat through "Natural Born Killers" in a movie theater and absolutely hated every minute of it. However, it was not a film I could escape from - something about it took a hold of me. In 2001, I wrote: "Natural Born Killers" is the kind of over-the-top nonsense only Oliver Stone could make. He is a brilliant director and, throughout his fine career, has crafted fine films such as "J.F.K," "Wall Street," "Platoon," "Talk Radio" and "Born on the Fourth of July." "Natural Born Killers" may be his weakest film by far and his most self-indulgent, a film where he claims to have not censored himself." I stand corrected because nothing in Stone's kaleidoscopic imagery from "The Doors" can begin to describe the superfluous flourishes of what is essentially the most controversial film of 1994. "Natural Born Killers" is a nuclear fever dream - an expose of what was the reality of celebrity murder in 1994, and what stands as the most evocative film of that year, the most prescient. I suppose I love and hate this movie.

The "Killers" in this movie are two white-trash kids named Mickey and Mallory, played respectively by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. The blonde-haired, vicious Mickey is in prison for grand theft auto but he still has the hots for the young, sexy, alluring Mallory Knox who frequently visits him in prison. Through pure intervention or "fate" (Mickey's own philosophy), he escapes from prison on horseback during a tornado and proceeds to rescue Mal from her vile parents by murdering them. How vile? Porcine Rodney Dangerfield plays Mallory's incestuous, blubbering wrestling fanatic of a father who is beaten to death and drowned (the mother is tied to a bed and burned to a crisp and Mal's brother is left as the sole survivor). After this already cartoonish sequence of violence, the two lovebirds go on the run, get married by an enormous New Mexico gorge, and indulge in a murderous spree all around the West killing at least fifty people. Naturally, Mickey and Mallory are branded as celebrities by another cruel force of nature, the media! The two killers are depicted as sexy criminals admired by globally by desensitized twentysomething fools who call them, "the best thing to happen to the media since Charles Manson." One grungy character ironically admits that if he were a serial killer, he would be Mickey and Mallory!

The Bonnie and Clyde pair are eventually caught by a crazed cop/writer, Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore) who specializes in writing about the minds of serial killers and in breaking women's necks. Tommy Lee Jones is the prison warden who is nearly as loony as any inmate in his prison where M and M are kept. And let's not forget Robert Downey Jr. as Wayne Gayle, an Australian TV host for the high-rated show "American Maniacs," who is eager to interview Mickey in a live special after the Super Bowl in the hopes of beating the ratings for the infamous Manson trial. This all ends in pure fire and fury during an eerily effective, blood-on-the-walls prison riot climax that remains the most horrifying footage Stone has ever shot on film.

As I stated earlier, I hated "Natural Born Killers" when I first saw it in a theater in August of 1994. I knew the reactions of the primarily young audience in the theater - who laughed and cheered at Mickey's actions during a particularly vicious opening sequence - was a definite sign of how times were changing. 1994 was the year where "Pulp Fiction," released a month later, changed film forever with its portrait of criminal antiheroes as the protagonists to root for. With "Natural Born Killers," the visual style is what bothered me the most initially. I could not sit still and watch such disorienting images coming in at a faster clip per second than say the bullets of a gun. I gave it a second chance much later on video and I can say that it is not as visually exhausting as it was in theaters. There are performances that stand out amidst all the noise. For example, Tom Sizemore does a marvelous job of balancing sorrow and sheer apathy for his character Jack, who grows more and more attached to the wild Mallory. Robert Downey Jr. is hilarious and pathetic as the loquacious TV host who will do anything for higher ratings, even if it means killing people himself. There are also some volatile turns by Joe Spinelli and Pruitt Taylor Vince as the warden's most trusted guards.

What works to a lesser degree is Tommy Lee Jones, overacting as much as anyone else in the movie - a simply cartoonish character who would be at home in a Road Runner short. It is also hard to remove the memory of Woody Harrelson from TV's "Cheers" - he appears to be too nice to play such a rough character like Mickey. Harrelson does try and there is a nicely underplayed scene where he is interviewed by Downey and claims his rather unbelievable reasons for bloodletting (all based on the words of Charles Manson during an infamous 1980's Geraldo Rivera interview).

Mallory is played superbly by Juliette Lewis and she certainly stands out the most in Stone's universe. She manages to make Mallory into a beautiful, believably scary and sometimes sweet monster almost ready to explode at any moment. Lewis is so good and inhabits the movie so often that becomes the soul center of the amoral world of this movie. This performance was so unusual for Lewis considering she's played mostly ordinary girlish types in films like "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" - the closest in proximity to Mallory is Lewis's role in "Kalifornia" and a TV movie she did with Brad Pitt called "Too Young to Die." Her work in "Natural Born Killers" will long be remembered, especially when she memorably utters "How sexy do you think I am now punk?" before brutally pounding an overzealous male. Lewis's appearance changes dramatically from short black hair to long blonde wigs, and she also wears cowboy hats, outlandish dresses, and bright red lipstick complete with a dangling cigarette.

Part of Oliver Stone's problem is that he is good at directing an out-of-control traffic jam rather than a subdued satire - he is just out to thrill us. A satire can make its points truly through exaggeration but also through pointed black humor. Consider Stanley Kubrick's anti-violent masterpiece "A Clockwork Orange," which is done with far more subtlety and restraint. One can argue that "Natural Born Killers" is not meant to be a satire but a mere condemnation of our media-obsessed world where killing is a stepping stone to celebrity on the same wavelength as movie stars. But even an outright condemnation needs a little breath of air or else you end up canceling yourself out - you can't fight fire with fire. Stone has made a desensitized movie about desensitized killers and has filled the canvas with lots of cartoonish violence - the sort of violence one would associate with an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, not an Oliver Stone flick. The violence is silly and trivial with none of the reality evident in Stone's hard-hitting war films such as "Platoon" or "Born on the Fourth of July." Sure, it is a movie about amoral killers in a typically amoral, devalued society but such rampant amorality would have served Ollie better as a sharp character study. Yet, it doesn't make the film any less than the sum of its parts - such overkill may be a hint of trauma in Mickey and Mallory's pasts. And maybe the lack of sting in the violence is only Oliver's way of saying: hey, that is our society! Truer words cannot be spoken than for today's culture of violence, hence why my opinion of this varies every few years.

Amorality is all that represents Mickey and Mallory, and what saves them in the end is love ("Love beats the demon.") They are essentially romantic rebels wronged by society for acting out their fantasy of a post-modern road movie where killers kill and get away with it. Since every other character in the film is as nasty and dehumanized as they are (particularly Scagnetti and the warden), then it is difficult not to empathize with Mickey and Mallory. This point-of-view was represented by Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" but not to the degree that Stone's film does. After all, "Clockwork's" killer protagonist Alex is far more human and clever than all the cartoonish types in this film, and thus a thematically richer film dealing with the nature of violence and how it can't be controlled.

Visually, Oliver Stone is on a dizzying mind trip as he continually shifts our point-of-view using everything from color to black-and-white to color negatives, scratchy film, 35mm, 16mm, video and stylized animation in various film stocks and speeds. These shifts in images are not sparingly used - they usually occur within one specific scene. The editing is brilliant, the filmmaking is dazzling (courtesy of noted cinematographer Robert Richardson), yet the overall effect is nauseating (there are reportedly 3,000 images in the entire film). If Ollie chose to use this breakthrough editing technique less frequently, then his various opinions of Mickey, Mallory and the media would have been more fully realized. Clearly, Oliver's point is to keep us continually on edge.

The best scenes in "Natural Born Killers" are the quiet ones where Stone allows motion to move smoothly without bludgeoning the camera. I love the scene after the ultraviolent cafe attack where Mallory dances on top of a car (to the tune of Cowboy Junkies' version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane") and superimposed images of angels, red horses, and bright colored lights flash by. There is also the masterfully edited and composed scene where Mickey and Mallory declare their love for each other by a bridge overlooking a gorge. They make a blood pact, eschewing the traditional wedding engagement, and their blood trickles into the water in animation style forming twin serpents (a recurring motif in the film).

After having seen "Natural Born Killers" several times, I am convinced that Stone's grandiose visions are spectacular to watch but, storywise, the film is interestingly muddled. I recommend the experience of watching this film as virtually a visual odyssey of rampant images, a crosscutting style of excess. It is a film I am not able to take off my mind, and everyone will read it differently. Some will see it as a dangerous polemic of our times, and others will see it as the very same trashy exploitative violence that Stone was only pretending to skewer. It makes you wonder how one should view this film when we are asked to root for the remorseless killers - they do survive the bloodbath and (spoiler alert) they have a family and move on. The more I think about it, the more it is apparent that the film is infused with hyperbolic anger so it falls somewhere between being an exaggerated polemic and a rock n' roll, nasty, violent exploitation picture. Or maybe just both.

It would be cool to fight William Shatner

FIGHT CLUB (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1999)

"Fight Club" is an audacious experiment in filmmaking. It also redefines the term multilayered. It has so many layers that not even a simple miniseries like "Les Miserables" or "The Winds of War" could match the density of this film. "Fight Club" is a unique, neo-noir, fascistic film - undefinable and unquestionably brilliant. I've never seen anything like it.

Edward Norton plays Jack, an insurance-claims investigator leading a lonely life of IKEA furniture and not much else. Jack is constantly on plane trips where he hopes his plane will crash since the life insurance is so much higher on a business trip. One day, he decides to frequent self-help groups, including one for testicular cancer. Of course, Jack has no testicular cancer, but what else can a lonely guy do? Meeting these people, including Bob (Meat Loaf), has given this insomniac an emotional release and an ability to sleep like a baby. Jack's life seems in order until he finds his female counterpart, Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), attending all these meetings (including, hilariously, the cancer group) for the thrill of it. Marla is certainly a pill. She steals clothes from laundromats and fakes suicide calls, and always runs in front of traffic. Marla has reduced Jack back to his former self. He can't sleep again, feeling threatened by this loose, volatile woman.

Eventually, Jack meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman who frees Jack from his isolation. Tyler also works at a hotel and occasionally as a projectionist where he splices in a single frame of pornography in children's films. One night, while drinking beers, Tyler suggest a new form of therapy for Jack, who has lost his possessions in an apparent accidental explosion in his apartment. Tyler engages Jack in "fight club," a club where barechested men engage in fistfights without gloves. The club is born as Jack moves into Tyler's nearly decrepit house and learns how to make soap, how to get a chemical burn, how to have sex with Marla - basically, how to be born again from a generation of men raised by women. This fight club engineers a movement all across the country. Even men like Bob (who had too much testosterone and grew breasts) learn to tackle their inner machoistic and masochistic behavior - men are men again without material possessions. They are on the course of self-destruction, as opposed to self-improvement.

Naturally, this club is not just about fighting as it slowly evolves. Tyler's club also includes "Project Mayhem," where businesses like Starbucks and corporate art symbols are destroyed (sometimes, an explosion on the surface of a building resembles a smiley face). What Tyler is forming is a terrorist organization without killing anyone. He is trying to bring out freedom, encouraging his members to pick a fight (one incredibly funny moment involves spraying water on a priest) and be free from the constraints of society. Jack doesn't quite see it that way, or does he?

"Fight Club" is not an average filmgoing experience. The film has its own rhythm, gliding along its own patterns and layers of storytelling. Director David Fincher ("The Game") has utilized distancing devices such as narration (used sparingly here), freeze-frames, subliminal cuts, impossible point-of-view shots (such as Jack's own nerves and nose hairs), and so on. The film is quite subjective, showcasing Jack's wild imagination, which includes icy caverns with sliding penguins, planes crashing into each other, split-second shots of forests, an advertisement for IKEA furniture with their prices superimposed, and much more. "Fight Club" unfolds in such a rapid succession of images and montage editing that it will leave you cinematically punch-drunk.

After one viewing, it is easy to miss some of the satire. In fact, you may not exactly know what it is you have witnessed. "Fight Club" seems more like an extension of a man's place in a consumerist society. But then there is all the mayhem from placing explosives in corporate buildings, credit card companies, and anything with a brand name. But it also buries itself in Jack's head, as in one incredulous moment where he punches himself repeatedly in front of his boss! One can say that "Fight Club" is an anti-consumerist, anti-society, anti-job, pro-male bravado-type film from the point-of-view of an emasculated insomniac. Earlier in 1999, there was Albert Brooks's "The Muse" where Martin Scorsese described making a "Raging Bull" remake with a really thin guy. Edward Norton seems to be the likely candidate in a movie that riffs on "Raging Bull" with blood-soaked glory.

Brad Pitt is about as live wire in this film as he ever gets as Tyler, expounding on Nietzschean philosophies and using bare fists as freedom fists. The question remains: does Tyler really think that his cult group is free if they have to conform to his ways? At one point, he says: "God doesn't like you." It could be that Tyler is just a rambling, egotistical, rabble-rousing Hitler whose own plans outweigh the results. Pitt shows the humor, the irony and the machismo of Tyler - this guy probably just wants some attention.

Edward Norton plays the most complex character of his career, showing Jack's frailty and emasculation flawlessly. He looks like a punching bag, and it is crudely funny how he shows up at his dead-end job with a black eye and a bloody lip. Norton also depicts Jack's recognition that this fight club has become too dangerous. There is a major twist involving his character which shows that Norton, one of the most gifted actors in the last twenty years, can convincingly mimic any facial expression at the turn of a dime.

Helena Bonham Carter, known for costume dramas, plays an unusual, atypical character. Her Marla has a weird hairstyle and a knack for doing anything for kicks, but she is also treated like a sex object by Tyler. The character may not have much juice, but Carter is game for sexual hijinks.

I am still not sure what "Fight Club" is really saying because it is difficult to discern if the film condones or condemns Tyler's neo-Nazi-bordering-on-punk actions. It is hard to say if the ending is optimistic or downbeat. Still, isn't the mystery the result of a great film? Mostly, "Fight Club" is a galvanizing, relentlessly violent, occasionally funny black comedy with satiric overtones. What Fincher has accomplished in this maddening parade is to inform us that society and consumerism have become social ills, preventing the males from being free to let loose and let the chips fall where they may. Oh, yes, and that it would be cool to fight William Shatner.