Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (R, 2002)

Television producer Chuck Barris became notorious for creating critically-maligned, audience-adored, low-brow classics like The Gong Show, The Dating Game, and The Newlywed Game. CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND depicts the double-life Barris claimed to have lived in his controversial autobiography, that of a television game show producer by day and a C.I.A. hitman by night. The movie takes place during Barris's television game show heyday, the 1960s and 1970s, coinciding with the Cold War. It is directed by George Clooney, written by Charlie Kauffman, and starring character actor Sam Rockwell.

Confessions lives up to its first class pedigree. Scenes cut between garishly colorful game show sets, the icy streets of cities behind the Iron Curtain that are interspersed with shots of Barris's squalid Philadelphia beginnings and, finally, his lavish Hollywood success. It's a jarring juxtaposition, made all the more unsettling by the fact that Barris champions feel-good, tacky television fare while covertly going on missions to kill Russian spies in dark alleys. The film delves heavily into adult themes related to sex and relationships, and his participation in contract killings is depicted graphically and hauntingly --never without some attention to the cost to the character's psyche and his relationships to others. Parents will be intrigued but should think twice about watching with kids.