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DVD Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
The memoirs of game-show creator-host Chuck Barris (the man responsible for The Newlywed Game and The Gong Show) are the inspiration for this sneaky biopic, which not only covers Barris's television career, but also his exploits--unsubstantiated, but also not disproved--as a government assassin. As Barris, Sam Rockwell gives a gutsy, manic-depressive, warts-and-all performance, depicting how Barris cheated repeatedly on his longtime girlfriend Penny (Drew Barrymore), was recruited into the CIA by a stone-faced agent (George Clooney, who also makes a stylish directorial debut), created some of the most popular yet reviled TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, and had a torrid affair with a mysterious, beautiful operative (Julia Roberts). For a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is pretty straightforward, letting Barris's fevered brain speak for itself. The result manages to be lurid, comic, and oddly philosophical. --Bret Fetzer
The sixties and seventies were turbulent times in America: Cuba had fallen to a communist revolution, a Hungarian rebellion had been crushed by Soviet tanks, and the Cold War was at its coldest. The CIA made a desperate gambit, eager to secure a master assassin who would fly under the radar and raise absolutely no suspicicion.
They decided to recruit game-show host Chuck Barris as their Ice Man.
George Clooney marks his directorial debut with a subtle, fast-paced, fancifully shot and whimsically paced bang. Sam Rockwell does a masterful job in portraying reluctant CIA killer and grandmaster game-show host Chuck Barris.
You remember Chuck Barris, right? High-toned, high spirited, pedal-to-the-metal host and writer and developer and uber-brain behind some of American television's most mind-rotting game shows, including "The Newlywed Game", "The Dating Game", and "The Gong Show". Oh, and according to his autobiographical "unauthorized" biography, a CIA assassin.
CIA Assassin?
Absolutely. According to Barris, while he was concocting runaway hits like "The Gong Show", he was serving his country and working with the fight to make the World Safe for Democracy by offing Russian agents and KGB lackeys. "Dating Game" super-sexy trip to West Berlin? Nonsense---it just provided Special Agent Chuck with the opportunity to play a Cold War version of 'whack-a-mole', literally and figuratively.
Clooney has solid directorial chops, and moves the film rapidly from the playful realm of whimsy, where characters are illuminated and shaded by filters and too much lighting, to the cold, grey world of Barris's nightmarish reality, where, as an aging, isolated CIA spook and killer, he's being stalked by operatives, assassins and thugs. Clooney is good in using music, set design, and dialogue to steer the film from the realm of comedy to stark terror in a matter of minutes.
In addition to being masterfully shot and scripted (with cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel, who did the camera work for both X-men movies and "Apt Pupil"), Clooney is adept in moving what begins as a nearly slapstick comedy into a taut, horrific little spy-game where Barris literally fights for his life.
"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is studded with first-rate actors and first-rate acting: Drew Barrymore plays Penny, Chuck's starry-eyed and long-suffering lover; Julia Roberts shines as mysteriuos secret agent Patricia, who reinvents the term "Man-eater"; Rutger Hauer brings the lustre of "Blade Runner" to his role as a West German assassin and spymaster; and Matt Damon and Brad Pitt are note-perfect as spurned bachelors on "The Dating Game". And best of all, the 'mockumentary' feel of "Confessions" is accentuated by candid appearances from Dick Clarke, Jaye P. Morgan, and even Chuck Barris himself, who provides a grim coda to the festivities.
Clooney is also superb as Barris's CIA handler, and serves as a perfect accent to this psychedelic Cold War chess game. And make no mistake: "Confessions" is hysterically funny, even as this most dangerous game becomes increasingly serious and deadly.
"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is a stellar, wickedly and consumptively absorbing debut by Clooney, and it's a fine tale well told. True story? Shaggy dog story? With this much style, who cares? Pop this on the DVD hopper, watch out for that guy down the hall in the trenchcoat, and enjoy.
JSG
One of the worst movies I've ever seen
This movie is so bad it's difficult to know where to begin. For starters everybody mumbles so it's not easy to understand but if you turn on the closed caption feature on your tv it gets even worse.
It's disjointed as though it's trying to be hip or cool or imaginative or maybe everybody just gobbled too many downers during production - especially when the writing & editing were going on.
Then there's the feel of the thing, the aura of the era - the make-believe NBC studios of the 1950s & 1960s with the cute coy pages about to break into song & dance. Hunh, is that what early TV was like?
Or the extruded plastic perfect bimbos who fall all over our hero even though they seem to regard him (correctly) as some sort of reptile. Still they invariably fall immediately into bed with him. Right. Am I missing something?. All that 21st century faux "hipster" cool. Sure.
It only gets worse. Much much worse. Time much better spent elsewhere. Anywhere.
Fascinating, If One Sided, Look At Game Show Hosts' Life
Charlie Kauffman, who wrote the interesting and different "Adaptation", finally comes full circle with a consistently good movie. "Adaptation" was very different, very interesting, and in the second half, very violent. The violence in that movie brought it down from great movie to really good movie. The change from comedy to thriller was way too abrupt, and I found myself wondering if they were allowed to show a naked one toothed guy running after Nicolas Cage. But "Adaptation" isn't the movie that I'm reviewing. "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind" was released late January 2003, among other great movies like "Chicago" and the little known but very sad "Evelyn", and such crappy movies like "Darkness Falls"(yes, I know it falls, but I still saw your damn movie!), and the best Ashton Kutcher movie ever "Just Married" (I'm not kidding, by Kutcher standards ((known to be as Kushy)) that movie was a masterpiece). Therefore, teen audiences and even some lame brained adults missed this movie. I was one of those people (not because of the bad movies though!), but I did happen to catch this on video one night. I guess catch isn't the right word, since I consciously rented it, put it in, pressed play, and then watched it, but still...I at first did not know what to make of the movie, mostly because it couldn't decide on a genre. Biography, action, thriller, comedy, drama, morality tale, musical? Fortunately the movie carries all these genres under its rather heavy handed task of delivering a two-sided story. And that's where this movie falters. In delivering a rather profound and interesting action-comedy-drama, writer Charlie Kauffman and director George Clooney fail to present both sides of the story. It only shows how the plot benefits Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), not how it harmed others or hurt his wife or friends. Kauffman progressively heightens the tone of the film, darkening it ever so lightly scene by scene, like an artist painting over his picture of a green country with blue, then brown, then black. When the last act arrives, we immediately see how we got there, what led to that, how it was established before that, and more, on and on. The movie represents more a soap-opera than anything else. Actors overact in a campy and fun way, and the violence, what there is of it, is surreal and fairly comical even. The movie is the equivalent of a bad acid trip. Not that the movie itself is bad, but because it all has the look of a '70's era "Don't Do Weed, Don't Have Sex" propaganda film that are probably still shown in schools to this day. In conclusion, pools are fun.
This fascinating comedy questions what we mean when we use words like "nature" and "civilization." Lila (Patricia Arquette, Lost Highway, True Romance), a nature writer who grows hair all over her body, falls in love with Nathan (Tim Robbins, The Player, The Hudsucker Proxy), a scientist attempting to teach table manners to mice. While hiking in the woods, they discover Puff (Rhys Ifans, Notting Hill), a man raised in the wild since childhood, whom Nathan seizes as a test subject for his experiments--and soon these three, along with Nathan's French lab assistant (Miranda Otto) are embroiled in criss-crossed love affairs as they (and the audience) attempt to figure out what it means to be true to one's own nature. Though Human Nature isn't as... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Patricia Arquette - Tim Robbins Director(s): Michel Gondry DVD Release Date: Released the 01 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Director Steven Soderbergh brings a playful spirit and a touch of genius to this oddly gentle Hollywood exposé. Full Frontal follows the lives of several people connected by varying degrees to the production of Rendez Vous, the film within the film that itself contains a film within a film. This layering and teasing of movie-industry standbys happens throughout: L.A. Law star Blair Underwood plays an actor who plays an actor who is a TV star who is making the jump to the big screen, major stars pop up as bit players playing themselves, and even the opening credits are a sly, dead-on parody of opening credits. The actors are clearly having a terrific time skewering movie insiders and, like any members of a family, are allowed to be both more affectionate and more... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): David Hyde Pierce - Julia Roberts Director(s): Steven Soderbergh DVD Release Date: Released the 11 February 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Twisty brilliance from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, the team who created Being John Malkovich. Nicolas Cage returns to form with a funny, sad, and sneaky performance as Charlie Kaufman, a self-loathing screenwriter who has been hired to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. Frustrated and infatuated by Orlean's elegant but plotless book (which is largely a rumination on flowers), Kaufman begins to write a screenplay about himself trying to write a screenplay about The Orchid Thief, all the while hounded by his twin brother Donald (Cage again), who's cheerfully writing the kind of formulaic action movie that Kaufman finds repugnant. By its conclusion, Adaptation is the most artistically ambitious, most... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Nicolas Cage - Meryl Streep - Chris Cooper Director(s): Spike Jonze DVD Release Date: Released the 20 May 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Screenwriters rarely develop a distinctive voice that can be recognized from movie to movie, but the ornate imagination of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) has made him a unique and much-needed cinematic presence. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a guy decides to have the memories of his ex-girlfriend erased after she's had him erased from her own memory--but midway through the procedure, he changes his mind and struggles to hang on to their experiences together. In other hands, the premise of memory-erasing would become a trashy science-fiction thriller; Kaufman, along with director Michel Gondry, spins this idea into a funny, sad, structurally complex, and simply enthralling love story that juggles morality, identity, and heartbreak with... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Michel Gondry DVD Release Date: Released the 28 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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