 |
|
||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Upcoming Release Calendar
38
12 Rounds Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
67
$9.99 Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Choke
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||
MPAA RATING: R for strong sexual content, nudity and language
Starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Brad William Henke, and Kelly Macdonald
Choke is a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Victor Mancini, a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical re-enactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever. (Fox Searchlight)
| GENRE(S): | Comedy | Drama |
| WRITTEN BY: |
Chuck Palahniuk (novel)
Clark Gregg |
| DIRECTED BY: | Clark Gregg |
| RELEASE DATE: | Theatrical: September 26, 2008 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 89 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Space C. gave it a3:
This movie is about a sex addict whose mom is dying from dementia. Its about as funny as it sounds. In the hands of a competent cast (with the possible exception of the lead), director and scriptwriter perhaps we would have been able to at least invest in the characters. However as is we are forced to sit through 89 minutes of drama surrounding characters we don't care about and a story too poorly told and blandly presented to follow.
Jay H. gave it a3:
Preposterous and stupid, none of the characters have any depth. It's pretentious, uninteresting and poorly directed. I found very little of interest.
Bill H. gave it an8:
A really great film. Haven't read the book or seen Fight Club, so I'm making no comparisons. It is an originally funny (which, given the context/plot is impressive), and poignant journey of someone who feels damaged beyond repair - and who even has identified with that image of himself - and the twisted path he's able to forge to some kind of sanity. Really, really enjoyed all aspects of it...
Zorro gave it a9:
i enjoyed it. i was in awe. how can i put this more specifically? i went to watch this movie without having read any reviews on it, and, like yourselves, i go to watch a movie on whether the good reviews outweigh the bad. higher chance of enjoying the movie, but then again lot's of ourselves see each other outside of the census. neither here or there. SO....it was great. From who he was, to why he was, to who he'll be, and i drove off trying to get to the shiny diamond island...
John S. gave it a3:
Went in expecting satirical and edgy. Left feeling like I'd witnessed a long and painful bowel movement, from every conceivable angle.
Chad S. gave it a7:
In M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village", the period detail of the rustic homestead was perfect except for one tiny detail; the tombstones in the villagers' graveyard looked too new. Vincent's boss at a colonial theme park is constantly on the prowl for such anachorisms: a wigless pate, a newspaper, a handjob. Vincent(Sam Rockwell) is a sex addict. He doesn't have to choke the chicken(fifteen times a day!!!) like his best friend Denny(Brad William Henke). Ladies love Vincent: Ursula(Bijou Phillips) risks having her check docked by their Colloquial Old English-speaking boss, who probably knows that manual stimulation of the johnson was rare in the 19th century. Even doctors can't resist the tour guide. "Choke" also recalls "The Sixth Sense" in the way the filmmaker skillfully guards its secret from the audience through careful staging. Vincent isn't dead, but his heart is. The doctor(Kelly MacDonald) sees this. She sees crazy people. Vincent supplements his income by choking on food in public eateries. It's hard to believe that total strangers would feel responsible for Vincent's life, so much so that they'd actually send him money, but then again, Fred Flintstone felt obliged to look after a con-man(J. Montague Gypsum in an episode of "The Flintstones" called "This is Your Lifesaver") after luring him off a bridge. The near-death experience scam is for a good cause, though. Vincent wants his mother(Anjelica Huston) to have the best medical care possible. She plays a big part in her son's life, and unfortunately, the story suffers for it. If "Choke" performed the Heimlich Maneuver on itself, expelling some, if not all, of Vincent's childhood flashback scenes with Ida on the lam, it would alleviate some of the overstatement that the narrative makes about Vincent's inability to love Paige, since the son's arrested development already has an explanation through his frequent visits at the institution with his mother. Getting to know the people in Vincen't encounter group would've made better use of the film's running time. But the film is smart about reigning in the fantastical impressions that people have about Vincent at the hospital. The doctor is a hilariously fallible storyteller.
Mark gave it a0:
Have yet to see the film. For anyone who thinks Chuck is a talented writer, try this exercise: please read, or re-read the first couple of sentences to Choke, then please open the first books of Lemony Snickets "A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning." Not only does it appear as if Chucky lifted the idea, he did a shitty job of executing it. Snickets book is obviously geared for children and has afar superior prose style. How anyone above the age of sixteen could have opened the book "Choke" and read beyond the first two sentences is beyond me.
 |
Return to top of page |  |
