`Fight Club’ worth catching in video version

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On Video

“Fight Club” — Directed by David Fincher; written by Jim Uhls,based on the novel,”Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk. Running time: 135 minutes. Rated R.

In “Fight Club,” David Fincher’s darkly comic, visually arresting and violent exercise in new-age masculinity, the director of “Se7en” and “The Game” asks audiences to consider what it means to be a man in a post-feminist society — one that Fincher finds absolutely emasculating and worth rising up against.

His film, which has strong Buddhist, fascist, nihilistic and totalitarian undertones, feels like “A Clockwork Orange” for the new millennium: It features a band of men liberated by violence.

Initially, the film’s much-publicized violence is almost comic, flirtatious, a giddy way of initiation into a world that eventually turns brutal in its orgiastic scenes of fist throwing and bare-chested muscle matches, and then strangely sensual as the film nears its climax.

Sexualizing the film is intentional. Since “Fight Club” is essentially about the reawakening of man’s primitive instincts, Fincher blurs the line between sex and violence while plunging his cast into a homoerotic atmosphere — a decision that reflects Fincher’s primary focus: This is first and foremost a film about men celebrating men for who they are and what they were.

The film stars Edward Norton as a corporate slave with no name — we only know that he’s the narrator, that he’s bored with his life, that he suffers from acute insomnia, that he’s addicted to 12-step programs, and that he defines himself by what he owns. He’s in desperate need of a spark that will ignite his dull life and give it some sort of structure and meaning.

At first, that spark seems to come in the disturbing form of Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a wild, filthy, chain-smoking bit of bacteria he meets at his testicular cancer support group. But no — the narrator’s life truly changes with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a hip piece of work he meets on an airplane.

Confident, instinctive, fiercely sexual and commanding, Durden is everything the narrator is not. Together, they start Fight Club, an underground movement of men who just want to be primitive men that eventually takes over their lives while also affecting the world.

“Fight Club” is 30 minutes too long and loses its focus three-quarters of the way through, but the performances are terrific, the direction is slick, and the twist at the end is almost as good as the twist at the end of “The Sixth Sense.”

Grade: B+

“The Bachelor” Directed by Gary Sinyor. Written by Steve Cohen. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.

The very best moment in Gary Sinyor’s “The Bachelor” doesn’t come when the film ends — although that’s a welcome moment after such an exasperating film — but when Sinyor recreates a scene from “Seven Chances,” the silent, 1925 Buster Keaton film on which “Bachelor” is based.

The scene is everything this film could have been: total farce that’s great fun to watch. In it, scores of bridal-gowned women race up the hills of San Francisco after Jimmy Shannon (Chris O’Donnell), a boring bachelor who has found himself in a rather remarkable situation: Jimmy has just 27 hours to find a bride. If he can do so, he’ll inherit $100 million. If he can’t, he’ll have to get by on his charm (which means he’ll be homeless within a week).

The problem with “The Bachelor” isn’t just its rampant overacting from Ed Asner, Peter Ustinov and Hal Holbrook, its twitchy performance from Renee Zellweger as Jimmy’s long-suffering girlfriend, or that its script is severely mired in the past, carrying over plot devices and sight gags that worked in the 1920s and ’30s but which seem oddly out of place here. The film also errs by staking its laughs on Jimmy’s many ex-girlfriends — including Mariah Carey as a fluttery opera singer and Brooke Shields as a desperate socialite, both of whom are so criminally awful, so stiff and obviously uncomfortable in their caricatures, one wants to either throw tomatoes at the screen — or call 911.

Grade: D+

“Music of the Heart” Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Pamela Gray. Running time: 110 minutes. Rated PG.

As hard as it may be to imagine Meryl Streep accepting a role that Madonna turned down, that’s precisely what the actress did to star in “Music of the Heart,” a film that pairs Streep with director Wes Craven who, until now, has exclusively directed horror films.

But this team works, which is no surprise when one considers the script: “Music of the Heart” is the true story of Roberta Guaspari, a tough, inner-city music teacher who is fighting the demons of an East Harlem grade school while also fighting for her two sons, for classical music and for herself. The role is a natural for Streep, who knows a few things about portraying tough women, and for Craven, who’s no slouch when it comes to tackling demons — even those wearing the tweed suits of academia.

The film, written by Pamela Gray, does what her “A Walk on the Moon” did so well: It avoids sentimentality in a story that easily could have courted it. But it also fails where “Moon” failed — it features dialogue that too often goes for the cliche.

Still, Streep’s Academy Award-nominated performance is always worth watching; she’s a bulldozer who ignites Guaspari with a hard-hitting frankness and humanity that lifts the film beautifully, especially when she comes under attack for her unconventional ideas about teaching.

With Angela Bassett, Aidan Quinn, Cloris Leachman, Jane Leeves and Gloria Estefan in supporting roles, “Music of the Heart” is no “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

It’s not meant to be. That film played to the heartstrings — this film plays straight to the pavement.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, Tuesday and Thursday on WLBZ’s “NEWS CENTER 5:30 Today” and “NEWS CENTER Tonight,” and Saturday and Sunday on NEWS CENTER’s statewide “Morning Report.”

THE VIDEO CORNER

Renting a video? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Fight Club B+ Flawless C- Music of the Heart B Tumbleweeds A The Bachelor D+ End of Days C+ The House on Haunted Hill F Mumford A- Stuart Little B- The Insider B+ Superstar B+ Three Kings A- Three to Tango D- Boys Don’t Cry A For Love of the Game B The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Ark C- The Phantom Menace B Jakob the Liar D Last Night B- The Sixth Sense A- The Omega Code F Pokemon: The First Movie C- Crazy in Alabama C Drive me Crazy C+ Guinevere A- The Limey A Outside Providence C+ Eyes Wide Shut B+ Buena Vista Social Club B+ The Bone Collector C+ Twin Falls Idaho A The Best Man B Random Hearts C- Stigmata C- Bats C Brokedown Palace C+ Double Jeopardy B- An Ideal Husband A- The Story of Us D The Astronaut’s Wife D- The Winslow Boy A- Runaway Bride C- Stir of Echoes A- Tarzan B+