Choke(2008)
Necromag recommends: Choke. This overlooked adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same name features Sam Rockwell as the back bone/boner of colonial America, Victor Mancinni. A sex addicted, historical reenacting, med-school drop out with a rather odd penchant for deliberately choking himself in restaurants. These asphyxiation sessions are used to fun his ailing mother’s (played by Anjelica Huston) medical bills by playing on the sympathies of those who ‘rescue’ him. The film follows Victor through his mother’s ever downward spiral coping with dementia with some sacrilegious sex and delusions of grandeur thanks to an incident with a missing foreskin thrown in for good measure. The film begins in a fight club like narrated style with the odd flash of cleavage here or there but this is deceptive as the rest of the film plays out with the dry sarcastic humor you’d expect from a movie like this. Widely advertised prior to release the film failed to surface at local cinemas with the odd showing here or there leading to this film being criminally ignored. Available on DVD now with occasional digital TV showings I highly recommend this piece about the existential crisis of an almost normal man who can’t quite leave the circuit.
