This is the first of two movies that George Clooney directed to make my list.  Considering that he’s only directed three all together, I think his track record is pretty good so far.  Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was based off of the book written by the main character Chuck Barris.  Considering that and the fact that it was adapted for the screen by Charlie Kaufman there is no doubt that it’s going to be filled with plenty of weirdness.  

If you don’t know anything about or never heard of Chuck Barris, he’s the guy who created The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and The Gong Show.  Yeah, he’s partly to thank for all of the lame reality crap that turds all over your television screen night in and night out.  He’s well aware that what he made was mindless garbage; he even says so in his book.   Maybe that’s why he also says in his book that aside from being a game show host/ creator, he was also an assassin for the CIA.  Yeah, he seriously made that claim.  He says that while he chaperoned couples that won on the dating game on trips to such random places as Helsinki and West Berlin he let the couples do their thing while he was actually on an assignment.  According to him, he assassinated 33 people.  Is this all actually true?  Probably not.  Does it matter?  Definitely not.  Half of the fun of this story is the whole what the fuck aspect of it.  Barris obviously didn’t think much of himself or his accomplishments in real life so he felt it was necessary to include his imaginary life in to autobiography.   

You would never guess that this film was made by a first time director, and George Clooney of all people.  The story is sort of half autobiographical and half fantasy and Clooney does a great job of adding that surreal element to it. Some people may be turned off by the way Clooney plays with color, focus and angles; but I think it adds to this mind goof of a story.  Not to get lost in all of this talk about Barris and Clooney is the performance of Sam Rockwell as Barris.  If you have seen Barris on TV, you’ll notice the great job he has done in capturing him.  If you haven’t, you can just take this as a job well done on an interesting character.  Rockwell has gotten some good roles since this movie, but I often wonder why he doesn’t get more.  Maybe he’s just better as a character actor than a leading man, but none the less he is always good.  Drew Barrymore does fine as his hippie girlfriend that he doesn’t deserve.  Julia Roberts takes on a small role here as a spy and mistress of Barris.  She’s ok, but to be honest I can’t really stand her in almost anything she does.  She has this sort of, I’m a sassy bad ass actress attitude in so many of her more recent roles and it really gets under my skin.  She’s not in enough of the movie to do any damage so I guess it’s not even worth mentioning.  This is a fun and funny movie and gets a lot darker than you might expect it to.  Well worth the rent.