The Five Best and Worst Movie Last Words

Five Best Movie Final Words

5. "What say you now, gentleman," says Federal Judge Justin Beach in Bad Company while looking at a picture of fellow judges just before riding the bullet.

4. "MMMMMMMMRRRFFFFFF!" says Gene Simmons just before the grenade Rutger Hauer taped to his mouth goes off in Wanted: Dead or Alive.

3. "What's that smell?" says Fight Club's Tyler Durden before blowing a smoke ring and right after alter ago "Jack" eats a bullet.

2. "You just shat in the one apple pie that knows how to shit back," says self-proclaimed tough guy Hank in Club Dread before promptly getting sliced open.

1. "We die" says Lord Kril from The Last Starfighter, when asked the insipid question: "What do we do?" when about to collide with a moon. In the pregnant pause before these words, Krill's cool little wrap around orange-shaded monocle slides into place.

Five Worst Movie Final Words

5. "Diplomatic immunity" says antagonist Arjen Rudd in Lethal Weapon 2 before Danny Glover puts a bullet between his eyes.

4. "Okay" says Matt Damon in The Departed when coming home to find a CSI-be-damned Mark Walhberg wrapped in plastic and holding a silenced gun.

3. "Fajajrualladuwla!" yells Tom Cruise in Valkyrie before being gunned down by a firing squad. The only thing I can figure is that he finally broke back into German and he was saying: "Please don't shoot!"

2. "But" and "I" say the twins aptly named Igg and Ook in Hudson Hawk before being shot by Sandra Friggin' Bernhard for failing their mission.

1. "But this is my home" says patriarch Jim Dahlberg in The Day After when confronting a roaming family settled on his land, who promptly shot him in the gut. Apparently this guy figured that after a full-scale nuclear holocaust people should still abide by property rights. Good thinkin'.

"Choke" goes down easy, but doesn't linger

I should begin by admitting that Choke is my favorite novel by Chuck Palahniuk, who happens to be one of my favorite authors. So, there's that, which might be considered a rather fine screen through which I'm shaking down the new-to-DVD Choke, with rough-around-the-edges Sam Rockwell.

From the onset, the film is in your face, much like Palahniuk's other book-turned-film, Fight Club. You are hip deep in comic depravity before you've even gotten the premise. In this way, Choke excels, since few films can pull off making nihilism intriguing (though not many films are based on Chucky P's novels now are they?). All scenes based in Victor's job site - think Colonial Williamsburg - are fantastic, as they were in the book.

I had a few issues, though, that I think even someone watching the film without having read the book would likewise pick up on.

1. The acting is bad at times. Not horrible, but Denny and his odd-couple stripper girlfriend Cherry Daquiri are pretty bad, as is Doctor Marshall at some times, not at others.

2. The flashbacks could have been handled better, as they lack the punch that these scenes could have had. I found myself far more interested in the relationship with Houston and Rockwell as present day Victor and Ida than in any of the flashbacks, and they ultimately add very little and have some rough transitions.

Too, Palahniuk is known for his ability to have odd, fascinating origins to the strange characters and occurrences in his novels. In Lullaby, you find out that the cause of SIDS is the unintentional incantation of an ancient culling spell - I mean, that's cool stuff!

Alas, these facets in the film version of Choke are largely missing, such as how Victor's money-making scheme of choking in fancy restaurants is brought to an end, or where Doctor Marshall really came from. These are things that would not have been difficult to include in the film, but are left unanswered or replaced with more mundane explanations.

All in all, Choke is very much worth your time, and worth a rental, even a purchase. It's funny, Rockwell is great, and it's twice as original as anything else you'll see the mainstream film industry putting out.

The ways in which it falls a little short are just in the insipid hopes of a silly Palaniuk fan, and are therefore to be largely ignored.