Fight Club

An insomniac office worker meets a soap salesman, they start a bare-knuckle club in a basement, and it grows into something with a membership and a plan. Fincher shot it in a sick greenish palette, and it is far funnier than its reputation suggests — much of the film is straight satire of catalogue-shopping, self-improvement and the idea that furniture constitutes a personality.

It flopped, was written off as juvenile, then found an enormous audience on DVD. It has since had the odd fate of being widely admired by exactly the people it is making fun of: Tyler Durden is written as a warning and gets quoted as a role model.

Adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's novel, with an ending Palahniuk has said he prefers to his own.