Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale. Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times, praised Fincher's direction and editing of the film. She wrote that Fight Club carried a message of "contemporary manhood", and that, if not watched closely, the film could be misconstrued as an endorsement of violence and nihilism. Roger Ebert, reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave Fight Club two stars out of four, calling it "visceral and hard-edged", but also "a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy", whose promising first act is followed by a second that panders to macho sensibilities and a third he dismissed as "trickery". Ebert later acknowledged that the film was "beloved by most, not by me". He was later requested to have a shot-by-shot analysis of Fight Club at the Conference on World Affairs; he stated that "[s]eeing it over the course of a week, I admired its skill even more, and its thought even less." Jay Carr of The Boston Globe opined that the film began with an "invigoratingly nervy and imaginative buzz", but that it eventually became "explosively silly". Newsweeks David Ansen described Fight Club as "an outrageous mixture of brilliant technique, puerile philosophizing, trenchant satire and sensory overload" and thought that the ending was too pretentious. Richard Schickel of Time described the mise en scène as dark and damp: "It enforces the contrast between the sterilities of his characters' aboveground life and their underground one. Water, even when it's polluted, is the source of life; blood, even when it's carelessly spilled, is the symbol of life being fully lived. To put his point simply: it's better to be wet than dry." Schickel applauded the performances of Pitt and Norton, but criticized the "conventionally gimmicky" unfolding and the failure to make Bonham Carter's character interesting. Cineastes Gary Crowdus reviewed the critical reception in retrospect: "Many critics praised Fight Club, hailing it as one of the most exciting, original, and thought-provoking films of the year." He wrote of the negative opinion, "While Fight Club had numerous critical champions, the film's critical attackers were far more vocal, a negative chorus which became hysterical about what they felt to be the excessively graphic scenes of fisticuffs ... They felt such scenes served only as a mindless glamorization of brutality, a morally irresponsible portrayal, which they feared might encourage impressionable young male viewers