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Author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk is back with a new film that turns the norm upside down and will make you laugh until you Choke.

Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)is a sex addict, he chokes himself to con money out of his would be saviors, and he just might be the half clone of Jesus. His already strange life takes a turn for the even more bizarre when his dementia-addled mother is dying, his best friend, also a sex addict, has a legitimately healthy relationship with a stripper (“My name is Cherry Daquiri. It’s not my real name.”), and he’s in danger of losing his job (don’t call him a tour guide – he’s a historical re-enactor). What’s a guy with intimacy issues to do?

So how does a normal guy end up like Victor? It’s simple, really. Take one totally nutbag mother (Ida Mancini) who does things like abduct Victor from his caring foster parents, sneaks Victor into the zoo late at night (only to free the animals, starting with the lynx whose cage Victor happens to be standing next to), and who makes Victor swear that no matter what, for all time, he belongs to her and no one else but her.

Ida Mancini, played by the stellar and transformative Anjelica Huston, is a kid’s coolest dream and worst nightmare rolled up into one. She’s beautiful and fun, dangerous and mentally unstable. It’s no wonder that Victor can’t emotionally connect to women (though one would think that her craziness would prepare him for the loonyness of women at large). His whole world, from childhood through his adult years, circles around this woman who needs him but can’t connect with him. As she lays dying in a home for the mentally unsound, Ida asks for Victor constantly, but doesn’t recognize him when he visits her – which is often. Instead, she sees only a collection of dead male lawyers (why lawyers? The film doesn’t say). Victor plays the part, always close to his mother but never really there.

And then comes the bombshell – or, as Victor puts it, the girl who ruined everything. His mother’s health is failing, and her new doctor, Paige Marshall, is trying to save her. Her plan sounds a little crazy, but as it involves sex, Victor is ready to participate. Or is he? As he gets closer to Paige and his mother, discovering more and more about his own origins, his ability to have sex with anything that moves diminishes, and his whole world begins to unravel. Or perhaps, as his best buddy, Denny (Brad William Henke, Dexter) thinks, maybe its finally coming together.

The movie is resplendent with typical Chuckie P. insanity – from the theory that Victor is the product of a genetic experiment from the holy foreskin to an anal bead stuck in his half-holiness’ tush. Though the film has a significantly lesser cool factor than Fight Club, it still has a lot of the same storytelling methods, from the hidden twist at the end to the supremely screwed up relationship (though no one can equal the dark glam of Helena Bonham Carter, this coupling does have quite a wrong, if not as sick, spin as that of Fight Club). The sex addict angle provides for ample nude shots and fantastic awkward sex-oriented moments, most of which can’t be quoted or referred to in this forum.

The cast is great, the story is very adult, very wrong, and very engaging. Choke is an excellent open to the fall movie going season, and utterly recommendable.

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