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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
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82
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82
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81
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80
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80
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79
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78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
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77
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77
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74
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74
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74
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74
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71
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70
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70
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70
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69
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69
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$9.99
67
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67
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66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
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64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
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63
Tokyo!
63
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63
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63
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63
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62
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62
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57
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54
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54
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54
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52
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50
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48
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45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
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40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
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16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Miramax Films
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language, sexual content and violence
Starring
Sam Rockwell,
Linda Tomassone,
Drew Barrymore,
George Clooney,
Julia Roberts,
Rutger Hauer,
Fred Savage,
and
Matt Damon
Television made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen. This is the story of the double life of legendary showman Chuck Barris -- television producer by day, CIA assassin by night. (Miramax)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Charlie Kaufman
Chuck Barris (book)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
George Clooney
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: September 9, 2003
Video: September 9, 2003
Theatrical: December 31, 2002
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
113 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Special Achievement in Filmmaking Award (Clooney) and Best Screenwriter (tie), 2002 National Board of Review

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
90
Variety
Robert Koehler
A powerful and creative film.

90
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
It's a funny, strange, sad and wonderful picture, packed with delightful performances by Hollywood stars and made by a director with a startling facility for the form and an expansive cinematic imagination.

90
Dallas Observer
Bill Gallo
A fascinating, frequently hilarious meditation on delusion, self-loathing and personal salesmanship

90
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A darkly enjoyable roller-coaster ride -- Clooney and Kaufman deftly interweave the macabre with lightheartedness.

88
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A head-clearing, mind-blowing blast from the past - one of the year's best.

88
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Screenwriter Kaufman is in fine meta-fettle here, even if he's still losing control of his material toward the end, and while it's too soon to tell whether Clooney has the stuff of a great director, he certainly knows who to hire.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
As for myself, I think he made it all up and never killed anybody. Having been involved in a weekly television show myself, I know for a melancholy fact that there is just not enough time between tapings to fly off to Helsinki and kill for my government.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The fascination of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the sharp, funny, unreasonably compelling adaptation of Barris' autobiography, is the way it soft-shoes past our skepticism.

80
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Confessions keeps its cards close, and Kaufman is perfectly capable of starving his screenplay to save it, and perfectly happy with being misunderstood.

80
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
A picture that is surely one of the oddest ever made.

75
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
Reflects the sensibilities of its director, whose comedic performances in particular have indicated a game spirit and droll sense of humor.

75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
A perversely enjoyable entry in that new genre, the biopic of the tawdry TV personality.

75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Clooney fashions a style all his own: visceral, vital and churning with off-the-wall ideas. That's what makes you want to see Clooney direct again. You can feel his joy in it.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Clooney shows strong filmmaking imagination in his directorial debut, but the movie's driving force is Charlie Kaufman's screenplay, a genre-bending romp that blurs all boundaries between the factual and the fantastical.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
This fairy-tale quality gives director Clooney, who's making his debut behind the camera, his stylistic clue. He's in perfect sync with writer Kaufman; they treat even the most "serious" scenes like Monty Python routines.

75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
All about the wacky borderlands where reality and invention intersect. But there are no safe demarcations -- no demilitarized zone, no Berlin Wall -- to cue us to which side we're operating in, or that Barris is operating in.

75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
May not be a straightforward bio, nor does it offer much in the way of Barris' motivations, but the film is an oddly fascinating depiction of an architect of pop culture.

75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
An attractive, charming film that has fun with its period settings, its goofy plot and its off-kilter performances.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
A moody picture that's filled from start to finish with camera tricks, unexpected angles and innovative flourishes.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Even though he's strikingly played by Rockwell, Barris comes off as such a distasteful character and the silliness is so unrelenting that the movie wears you out. Long before it's over, you feel yourself reaching for that gong clapper.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
A great, bizarre, and ultimately very, very unique film.

63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
It's nice to see Clooney choosing something offbeat (as opposed to "safe") for his first outing behind the camera. If he continues to develop, he has the potential to become a good director -- he's just not there yet.

60
LA Weekly
John Powers
Ultimately just another celebrity bio-pic, and far less trenchant than, say, the more conventional "Auto Focus." For all their whirring ingenuity, Kaufman's scripts require a director who will tether his cleverness to reality.

60
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Sam Rockwell plays Barris with a hipsters shimmy thats creepily effective -- The problem with making a movie about a hollow man is that, when things start to get heavy, youre stuck with nothingness at the core.

60
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The finished film afflicted my own mind with an unwilling suspension of belief. I couldn't connect with it on any level, despite Sam Rockwell's terrific performance as an emotional desperado who wants only to be loved.
60
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
A good piece of work more often than not, and this is one of the few times an actor turned director has chosen to subvert the feel-good genre for his maiden voyage.

60
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Clooney badly botches the spy plot by casting himself as Barris's agency contact... and a truly awful Julia Roberts as Barris's Mata Hari lover (she's soundly upstaged by Drew Barrymore as his devoted girlfriend). Yet the mounting delirium drives home Kaufman's basic point: that a shadow government rules by bread and circuses.

50
Slate
David Edelstein
I suppose it's too much to expect Pirandellian stature from the madness of Chuck Barris -- but that's about the only thing that would have made this mixed-up ego trip work.

50
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
It's tremendously clever, but ultimately pointless.

40
Film Threat
Darrin Keene
The ingredients were there for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to become a cult classic, but the resulting film is a tedious Hollywood yawner.

38
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
You won't believe the story director George Clooney and his goofball TV host are trying to sell. Really.

38
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
For the story of a man who made his mark on pop culture by being a likable buffoon, the irritatingly arch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind takes itself way too seriously.

30
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
George Clooney's first effort behind the camera was doubtless more stimulating to direct than it will be for audiences to watch.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
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