Choke (2008) More at IMDbPro »

The trailer for this movie looked promising, even though the reviews were mixed. I liked Sam Rockwell in 'Matchstick Men' and 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind', so I thought I'd take a chance & check this out.

The plot of the movie is Vic (Sam Rockwell) is a sexually obsessed colonial era theme park employee and part-time con man, who is supporting his invalid mother (Anjelica Houston), who resides in a nursing home, which costs $3000 per month.

The film is a series of vignettes, with the central themes being Vic's childhood, his mentally ill mom, his descent into sexual addiction, his relationship with his best friend Denny (excellently portrayed by Brad Henke) and his group therapy sessions with other sex addicts.

Vic re-counts his upbringing with his mom, which was chaotic, because his mom was basically nuts. Vince never knew his father, & much of the movie (when we aren't subjected to Vince's actual and imagined sexual encounters), is in trying to figure out who his father was. At one point, Vic was lead to believe his mom had been artificially inseminated with semen derived from the DNA of Jesus Christ. Needless to say, this generated a lot of funny bits.

At the nursing home where his mother lives, Vince befriends Dr. Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), who also happens to be very close to Vince's mom. This is a key relationship in the film, & figures prominently in the film's conclusion. I won't spoil the ending further, but it was a good one.

This was a very good film, well written & acted.