Rating: 
Summary: De-Freaking-licious fun!! A ROMP!
Review: Was Chuck Carris working for the CIA??? I doubt that EVEN Chuck knows for sure at this point, but this story is hysterically funny either way. It's intriguing, engrossing, laughable, and interesting. You will turn it off and say, Hmmmmm.....
Rating:
Summary: BANG-A-GONG
Review: Zany, delightful, and strangely compelling comedy purporting the host of TV's "The Gong Show" was a hit man for the CIA. Director George Clooney has a deep apprecitation for TV's pop culture and a wide span grip on this unyielding but doubtful true story, from the autobiography of Chuck Barris who had the audacity to confess to the world that while host of "The Gong Show", he was a CIA assassin. Vintage takes on "The Newlywed Game" and "The Dating Game" sharply define muted sexual psychedlia that was '60s network television. Yet the question remains - was he or wasn't he a hit man for the CIA? Come on, Chuck! Must we say so? We've always loved you! Go ahead and have your little delusion. It's just a little guilt you're dealing with. We forgive you for "The Gong Show Movie"!
Rating: 
Summary: not for me
Review: I tried to watch this movie but there was too much male nudity in it. As a 100% HETERO MAN I could not stomach it. If I wanted to look at a guy's ... crack for 2 hours I would have hired a plumber. George Clooney could have a good career shooting ... porn.
Rating: 
Summary: Bizarre to say the least...
Review: I knew nothing of the book, but decided to rent this from the movie store. (Marked as a comedy) I kept waiting for it to "grab" me, and I guess it did because I watched it to the end but I didn't really laugh that much. I thought the movie to be more bizarre in the sense that "Pulp Fiction" is odd/bizarre. (And I LOVED Pulp Fiction.) The other reviews are well written so to be different I will keep this one short and sweet. There was alot of foul language (I always wondered if people actually used that one word so much back then...) But I found it to be unnecessary. As for the story, it was an original idea, but a comedy... well I thought it fell short . You may be dissappointed in this one unless you're a fan of Barris and the wonderful cast this movie employs...
Rating:
Summary: Clooney and Kaufman
Review: In George Clooney's directoral debut, it's a hit. From screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) comes the true story of Chuck Barris. A...NBC manager who has created game shows such as, The Dating Game, The Gong Show, and other various famous shows. But as Chuck's humble life progresses, he is spotted by the CIA and is recruited by George Clooney. As Chuck is sent to different countries to kill terrorists, Clooney gives him ideas for game shows and chaparones the winner of the free trip on The Dating Game. As time progresses, we go down a road of suprises and betrayal into the life of Chuck Barris. Starring Sam Rockwell (Matchstick Men) as Chuck, Drew Barrymore and directed by George Clooney. Funny drama.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth my money
Review: A film by George Clooney Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is the debut effort from director George Clooney. It is also based on the memoir by Chuck Barris. Barris is best known for being the creator of the television shows: The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show. We open the movie with Barris (Sam Rockwell) living in an apartment feeling very paranoid. His girlfriend, Penny (Drew Barrymore) is trying to get him to come home, but it is very obvious that he is very freaked out about something and very non-trusting. I think the movie jumps around a little bit with time, so we are taken back to when Barris is trying to pitch ideas for television shows and he has some measure of success when Jim Byrd (George Clooney) recruits Barris for the CIA. Now Barris is living a double life as a Game Show creator/host as well as a CIA Assassin. He meets Patricia (Julia Roberts), also an agent. As the movie continues, Barris's paranoia grows. He wants to quit with the CIA and just work on his shows, but Byrd keeps pulling him back in. At first he thought it was fun, but no longer. The movie covers a period of Chuck Barris's life, though we do get a flash forward where a much older Chuck Barris sort of reflects back on his life. We see Barris both as the Secret Agent as well as the slightly out of control game show host. One thing that the movie does not make clear (perhaps because there is no clear answer), is whether or not this is all true. We know it is based on a memoir, but it has a feeling of not being quite right. This isn't answered. It is played as being true, but in other scenes, we wonder. Did Chuck Barris really kill those men? Is Patricia really an agent, or is she just a woman Barry is seeing? Whatever the take you have on the movie, I found it somewhat disappointing. It was fairly well made, and Clooney did a good job directing, but the movie didn't do much for me. It was just "blah". Nothing special here. Move along.
Rating:
Summary: sam rockwell
Review: i give this two stars for sam rockwell's genius performance. not much to this pathetic movie.
Rating:
Summary: Take no pity on Barris, but enjoy Clooney's visual feast
Review: "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," is a confused, smarmy biopic of Chuck Barris, the sad, rather insipid host of "The Gong Show," whose life, even by his own admission, isn't worthy of a silver screen treatment. But it is so ambitiously and impeccably shot by first time director George Clooney that while the movie essentially succeeds as a lengthy showcase of cinematography, it does succeed more than it should. Clooney obviously went to visual preparatory school - drawing upon far more inspiration than just buddy Steven Soderbergh - to create a collection of pop images worth looking at, if nothing else. Barris was the creator of "The Dating Game" and "The Newlywed Game" in the 1960s, "Gong Show" host in the 70s, where his performance as the tuxedoed emcee remains one of the most bizarre roles in television history. He bottomed out not long after the show was canceled, and then resurfaced with the title book, which flouted the highly dubious claim that he was also a CIA assassin for more than 20 years, collecting 33 notches on his silencer. Charlie Kaufman's script tackles the book head on in an effort to humanize Barris and bring these "spy encounters" to life; Sam Rockwell never seems to age in the film, but he's capable as a forever insecure, puerile Barris. And Drew Barrymore is very good - maybe better than she's ever been - as Penny, Barris' long-suffering girlfriend. Barrymore delivers one line - "Man, I'm gonna give you one more chance - got it?" - as if she's said it too many times, to too many creeps. Clooney balances the movie between Barris' rise/fall in showbiz and his CIA career under, well, Clooney, who as agency field boss Jim Byrd assigns Barris to reward his dating game guests with trips to Europe, serving as a perfect cover for a mission. Rutger Hauer, plucked from the trash bin of history, is a hitman partnered with Barris on a key case, while Julia Roberts is completely spinning her wheels (again) in a bit role as a shadowy assassin with bigger designs. As creative as Kaufman has been with his original scripts ("Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich") he never finds a unique structure of presenting the story, outside of a framing device that finds Barris at the end of his rope, naked in a hotel room. There is one amazing scene where Kaufman compiles all the criticism of Barris into one monologue by a Playboy Bunny (Krista Allen) that plays as the turning point of the film. Mostly, however, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is an endlessly inventive visual experience. Clooney, with cinematographer Thomas Newton Sigel, uses every crayon in the box: split screens, rotating sets, infrared cameras, mirrors, deep focus, tracking sequences, offscreen dialogue, subtitles for dialogue drowned out by music. In scenes set in the 1950s, actors look like gleaming pieces of obsidian. Later, the classic Soderbergh washed-out look is employed. Clooney splashes his ego all over the canvas, but he's doing it with craftsmanship and flair that will serve him well when he pares his visual repertoire in later movies. The drawback to such showmanship, of course, is that it relegates the story, and Rockwell's performance, to chunks of scenery. Kaufman's script can't quite decide how to present Barris, waffling between pity and derision, both informed with the slightly suffocating arrogance of Kaufman's attitude toward showbiz. And Rockwell, at times, seems to be playing the notes without hearing the music. It doesn't help that both Clooney and Roberts have bought so wholly into the Soderbergh School of Posture Acting that they've become uncomfortable with the smallest hint of enjoyment in the craft; they perform with Rockwell as if to beat him down with the rise of their eyebrows. Barrymore is perfectly cast as the easygoing girl with a sweet heart, but she plays Penny with a weight that, had it been duplicated instead of mocked by Clooney and Roberts, might have infused "Confessions" with some amount of resonance. But never mind. Barris, as a man, is no John Forbes Nash, and since half the story is probably a lie, what we invest in a joker is wasted time anyway. "Confession" is never consistently smart or funny or poignant - it may, in fact, be halfway annoying - but the themes are overwhelmed, and rightly so, by the film's dazzling look. It may not entirely illuminate the complexities of Chuck Barris, but it is an impressive tour of the time Barris lived through, and helped create, even if, one day, it leads to the decline of the Western Civilization.
Rating: 
Summary: Marvellous
Review: I don't understand the negative reviews this film generates. It's inventive, stylish and more than a little moving. Sam Rockwell is superb as the disintegrating Barris. Kaufman's thoughtful script perfectly captures the pathos and splintering consciousness of a thirtysomething loser who imagines he's something else. Clooney's direction is clever and confident, and rightly so - this is the best actor-director debut I've seen. He's clearly learned a lot from his buddy Steven Soderbergh, but this never plays like an amateurish homage piece. It's quite simply one of the most original, interesting and well-crafted films of the year. Like "Solaris", it's going to be one of those movies that everybody missed and then spends the next decade discovering on DVD.
Rating:
Summary: When Actors Become Directors
Review: All too often, when an actor decides to try his/her hand at directing, the result is disappointing. It's as if actors feel such a need to prove themselves as having a bold directorial vision that the style of their movie takes precedence over the substance. That is the case here with "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." George Clooney overdirects this film to the hilt. Count the number of unconventional compositions that serve no purpose other than to be unconventional. I love experimental, original cinema, but I hate pretentious directors who think merely by shooting a scene from a crooked angle they're making high art. "Confessions" should be much better than it is, since it's full of striking images, propulsive music and pretty good performances. But it's a mish-mash, not helped at all by the mess of a screenplay by Charlie (most over-rated screenwriter in Hollywood) Kaufman. And whoever made the decision to shoot the entire film in a funky, surreal color scheme should be denied the right to work in film forever. Again, it serves no thematic purpose and does nothing but distract. This isn't a horrible movie--it's not even necessarily a bad movie. Yet, I just didn't like it. It contains good elements--the acting, for one, is pretty solid over all--but I thought the whole thing just felt flat, and wasn't anywhere nearly as interesting or dynamic as it seemed to think it was. Grade: C
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