ESSENTIAL VIEWING: Fight Club (1999)

Brad Pitt’s one-two punch of 1990s David Fincher collaborations established both on the A-list. Seven, their first film together, started off looking like a buddy cop movie. Then it took a hard left, shocked audiences by descending into the seven circles of Hell and destroyed Pitt’s decent but volatile young cop. But Fight Club, wherein Pitt’s the unrestrained id to Edward Norton’s ego, is the real stand-out.  Pitt is free-wheeling and impossibly charismatic as he starts a movement powerful enough to bring down society - and this despite wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe covered in appliqued tea-cups. Even Hollywood sometimes has difficulty finding a credible way to deal with Pitt’s good looks; here, as the guy every other guy secretly wants to be, they finally make sense. Fincher and Pitt were clearly on to something: even their less universally adored third team-up, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, sees the actor stretched to give a different kind of performance from any before.