Rating: 
Summary: Revolutionizing Filmmaking--And I Like Where It Is Taking It
Review: There might be no rational way to describe this movie, nor the style, nor the story, nor the characters. It is, in fact, by far one of the most unique and eccentric films that I have ever had the pleasure to witness. And a true pleasure it undoubtedly was. In fact, I wish that I could make this a well-rounded review with adequate portions of praises and criticisms, but it is just too well-done, too visually appealing, too imaginative of a film to be attributed with any minute, negative traits. This is a film that sets about redefining the style of filmmaking; the fact that it succeeds establishes this film as one of the all-time greatest. Every moment, visual, line, and character is a forward leap in filmmaking that never fails to inspire and impress.First of all, before you ever realize how psychologically deep it is, you'll find it hilarious. With great attention to the idiosyncratic clash between "civilized" culture and the counterculture that opposes it, Fight Club satirizes every institution to great depth. Nothing is sacred; nothing is revered. Moreover, visual effects are utilized to a new end, not simply as a device to convey plot, but also to expand the mood, the momentum, and the character psychology. But as the film continues, as the characters grow and the situation becomes increasingly dire, one can't help but be pulled into this neurotic visualization of criminal life. It is a story and a set of characters that pulls you into a new world and makes you seriously question the one that you have lived in for all of your life. And all of this couldn't have happened without truly magnificent performances. Edward Norton is always great, but offers a multi-faceted performance that rivals his more appreciated works. Brad Pitt is perfect for the role; no one else could have played it as effectively. And then there is Helena Bonham Carter who is...Weird--and that's what makes her great. The direction is ambitious and enthusiastic, both heavily to the film's credit. By being so eccentric, the direction obviously sets and then expands upon the mood from the opening credits to the very last shot--arguably one of the greatest concluding shots in film history. But none of this would have had any great impact without the clever and meticulous script that always offers a surprise and maintains the momentum during every scene. And so all of this culminates into what has now become one of my all-time favorite films. There are just so many great ideas offered, so many interesting characters and perversely fascinating images, and moreover such a psychologically profound story that one cannot help but become enthralled with this masterwork of new age filmmaking. But beyond that, it sets a style that people will be mimicking for some time, but with lesser success. Fight Club stands as one of the most unique and inspiring films of the 90's. It certainly deserves your attention and respect.
Rating:
Summary: Beauty in violence
Review: ''There is too much violence in Fight Club!" remark the cowardly reviewers who mock this brilliant piece of fiction. If this is so, they clearly have a weak knowledge of film, as there are MANY MANY more films out there that are 10 times as violent. I'm not going to bother to write a pretentious, opressive review, and instead tell it to ya straight. Fight club is the tale of an unnamed office worker (played by Norton)- a slave to money and merchandise, living in somewhat of a shrine to IKEA. Bored, disillusioned, and suffering from insomnia, he attends cancer support groups to wallow in sympathy and self pity with others, to alleviate the turmoil of his sad lonley exsistence. His life changes, however, when he meets Tyler Durden- a hedonistic soap salesman- who is literally everything that Norton's character isn't. the rest of the story documents the growth of 'Fight Club'- an underground bare knuckle fighting network that Tyler and the narrator create, and riddled with Tylers twisted anarchic philosophy, the film compels due to its slick direction and sublimely satisfying visceral content. yes, it is violent, but life is violent, and you cant spend your days sheltered from the facts of life.
Rating:
Summary: I Am Jack's Shameless Follower
Review: This movie is truly a great film. Covering all the genres, Fight Club is funny, sad, violent, mellow, suspenseful and most importantly great all throughout from beginning to end. Keeping pretty true the book by Chuck Palahuniuk, Director David Fincher did a really great job portraying it. This DVD also has some great special features: deleted scenes, 4 or 5 commentaries, advertising trailers, commercials, and internet ads, easter eggs, and much more. The was one of the first DVD's I bought. After seeing it in Theaters (which I drove 70 miles to go see), I didn't think watching it home could ever be quite as good. The VHS version doesn't offer much other than seeing it again, whereas the DVD scores an eagle as far as entertainment, quality, extras, and superb sound...featured in Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, and mastered in THX. This is my favorite movie of all time!
Rating: 
Summary: Contradictions...
Review: Fight Club is the kind of movie where a lot of ideas have been crammed into for the sake of coolness. It ends up being too many cool ideas that make this a pretentious, fashistic and very contradicting movie. The movie starts off fine by showing consumer Edward Norton complaining about the capitilist culture surrounding us and how crazily it is integrated in our lives. He is wimpy, a coward and brainwashed. Then we meet Pitt, the opposite of Norton, a rebel, violent, daring, against the modern culture, everything it represents and everything Norton ever wanted to be. They start Fight Club, which probably all the readers already know, and they make this a nationwide skinhead organization. After a lot of events, we learn that Pitt was a piece of Norton's imagination, that Norton is a schizophreniac. Which is where the whole problem of the movie lies- Fincher expains all of the characteristics of the Pitt character as a mental illness, therefore rendering them irrelelvant. Yes, the problem is the cool-to-watch ending. It denies everything the characters stood for. It is obviously a method to deny the extremeness of Pitt's methods, yet it ruins all of it, all the social commentary. It is contradicting, because, judging on how passionatly Pitt speaks at times, Fincher wanted the commentary to be intact, but he just couldn't let a fashist group win at the end, could he? This is called political correctness, something that is ruining a lot of movies these days. Fincher's technique is like a referee punishing two teams at the same time, for the sake of seeming objective and indifferant to the material. Does he believe in either side? Well, judging on Pitt's lines, he rathers the fashists. How is it a fashist's movie? Well, besides the skinheads in the Club, the situation is given as black and white, with no room to argue. This is Norton's character, this is Pitt's, these are the rights and wrongs of each side, no questions asked, let's get on with the fighting. According to Fincher, there are only two sides in society- one he ends up explaining as a mental illness, the other he chastises throughout the movie. Even the one thing I like about the movie is ruined. I really liked how the Norton character has been laid out, and I was pleasently suprised to see homosexual tendencies in him (towards the Pitt character), which reminded me of Raging Bull. How is he a homosexual? Well only observe Norton's glances at the Jared Leto character once he sees that he and Pitt are getting along better, while he is left in the dark. Then see the fight between Leto and Norton. Norton: "I wanted to destroy something beautiful." This sort of thing obviously arises from the tendency to move away from banal mainstream sexuality. Very cool. Yet then, at the ending, once Norton returns to his former self and kills of the Pitt side of his brain, we see him holding hands with the Helena Bonham Carter character. Obviously, with the death of the Pitt character and the anarchistic, elitist spirit in him, the homosexuality has died as well, and he has returned to his natural heterosexual state. Fincher seems to equal homosexuality as a side effect of the Pitt characteristics. Somebody, tell me that is NOT fashistic. So even the ending, the abolishment of the fashists, results in the extreme right. One of the other things I liked about the movie is Fincher's dark comedy visual style (remember the penguins, or the plane crash) and how Freudian the Norton character is. The soundtrack is pretty good too, as are the preformances of the cast. Yet the movie is manipulative, just like Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor and just doesn't have enough guts to showcase its ideas in clarity. I don't mind it when a movie really admits on how it stands ideologically, fashism, communism, anarchy or whatever, yet movies like this are an insult to the audience as they try to showcase themselves as something it they are not. This movie isn't anti-capitilist, or whatever, and if you want a good social commentary see "A Clockwork Orange." A commentary on our current generation (which I belong to) or society and general, it is not.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Movie
Review: I'm not sure what other people are seeing when they say this is a horrible movie. This movie was one of the best ive ever seen. It had an extremely orignal plot, incredible acting, and a script that made you think if you really did have another side to yourself. The peope that gave this movie a bad review most likely didnt see past the violence. Maybe its just me but i like it when movies are violent to the point where they make you feel kind of uncomfortable. It gave the movie a certain grittiness that was needed to enhance the story and make it such a masterpiece. The underlying mesage in this movie is great. Under all of the blood and gore is an extremely well done picture which can make you think, cringe and never forget this movie. Buy it now, its worth the 20 bucks.
Rating:
Summary: one of the best movies of the 90s
Review: I remember walking out of the theater after seeing fight club around midnight. I felt really strange but in a good way. I've never really seen anything like fight club before or after. Repeated viewings of the movie are still really interesting from what new things you pick up. It really helped to make edward norton one of my favorite actors. From start to finish, it's really a guessing game of what will happen next.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs serious thinking
Review: For a movie that seems to be a violent from the title or on the first viewing, a second viewing picking up the points gives a chance to understand a the true esseance of the underlying message. A movie looking violent seems rather philosophical when you see it with an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: Manipulative
Review: The problem with Fight Club, as Roger Ebert pointed out, is that it is basically talking out of both sides of its mouth. The movie begins with a fine piece of acting by Edward Norton, who plays a basic nobody, emasculated and ground down by consumerism and conformity. Fight Club carries this off pretty well, given how trite the theme is by now.
At any rate, Edward Norton's character meets Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), a truly liberated and empowered male, i.e. everything that Norton's character is not. Together, they come up with the idea of transcendence through "Fight Clubs" of men beating the living hell out of each other. Supposedly, this will put whiny Gen X-ers in touch with their primal, messier, emotional instincts, which society has breeded out of them. They'll be free men, finally. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out, things take a predictably fascist/terroristic turn, and then they get even worse.
The problem here is the movie's moral center. Look, it says, consumerism is empty and bad. And the 'solution,' it says, is also bad. The audience is not supposed to hold a positive view of the fascist entity Project Mayhem eventually becomes. But while the movie's condemnation of consumer culture is scathing, the shots it takes at Project Mayhem are halfhearted at best. Why? Because it sells itself on scenes of gruesome violence rather than intelligence, and so it needs to show ever more guys pounding each other. It can't quite make the appropriate moral judgment of Pitt's character because it's partially in league with him and everything he represents.
I can't buy condemnation of violence and terrorism from a movie that is chock full of scenes of violence and terrorism photographed so as to make high schoolers go, "Whoa, cool." It is unfair for a movie to bring out scene after scene of lovingly filmed violence for its audience to marvel at, enjoy, and buy tickets to see, and then at the very end, cough and say "Uhm, violence is bad. Well, goodnight, folks."
Look, I have no problem with violence in film. I love action movies. But Fight Club tried some cheap cinematic sleight of hand to explain it's way into intelligence, while still shoveling more slop at the lowest common denominator.
The film is well made, as far as it goes, and Norton is a great actor. But for the avid fans of Fight Club out there, let me say this: It's not that I don't understand or am offended by this movie. I understand it perfectly. Maybe better than you do. Believe me, I get it.
And it still sucks.
Rating:
Summary: Great satire, and David Fincher make for a great movie
Review: Don't violence and nihilism go hand in hand? After watching this movie, you'll probably believe that they do. I don't know which I'm drawn to more, the clever plot and social undertones, or the film's blatant fascination with human violence. It's probably the violence. Ed Norton always manages to turn in a good performance, no matter what film he's in. I would say the same for Brad Pitt, but he's done some stinkers. The DVD is topnotch, with great extras and some good insight on the commentary track. I'm not going to ruin anything else about the film if you've yet to see it, so buy this DVD now and get down with some violence...I mean poignant social commentary. Yeah, that's it.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Movie....
Review: Wow! That is all I can say about this one. This movie has so many different levels to it that after buying it 2 years ago, I am still seeing different things! I can not believe how much substances there really is to this flick and I recommend that everyone see this moive. Let's get down to it...
THE GOOD: 1) GROUND BREAKING. In a time when so many movies are watered down, can anyone say Scary Movie?, it is nice to see some work that has substance. Everything about this movie is new, from camera work to the plot, this movie rocks! 2) ACTING. I knew that Edward Norton could act, but who would have thought that Brad Pitt could? I never believed in his acting ability until now. The chemistry that these two have on screen is amazing and makes for an entirely enjoyable movie. 3) PLOT. One of the most original I have seen in a long time. You will not be disappointed in this department my friends, nor will you be able to guess the ending.
THE BAD: 1) VIOLENCE. Now, I am never one to not see a flick because it has a huge amount of violence (I used to watch Terminator and Predator all the time when I was young), but this one has a ton. WHile this does not turn me off, other viewers might not be able to see past this level and get to the good stuff underneith. 2) SUBSTANCE. I think that this movie should be seen by everyone, but since the substance is so graphic the younger viewers are going to have a hard time getting their hands on this one. I have to put this under the catagorie of "bad" because it seems to me like a level of censorship and I can not stand that.
THE BOTTOM LINE: This moive is no ALMOST FAMOUS, but it will change your life in some way. I recommend this moive to all people, but only if you can get past the level of violence that it contains. This moive is a MUST SEE for everyone and a MUST OWN as well.
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