Confidence
|
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(rated R, 105 mins.) If you grew up in the seventies you can’t help but remember the cult hits “The Dating Game”, “The Newlywed Game” and its creator Chuck Barris who starred in his also zany created – “The Gong Show.” This is the story of “Chuckie Baby” Barris (Sam Rockwell) and his possibly fictitious life as a CIA agent. It’s 1940 and Barris is a kid with one thing on his mind: Girls. Having no luck with them he turns his focus to TV, an ‘industry with a future’, by packing up his bags and moving to NYC. Beginning as a NBC tour guide, he quickly rises up the ladder when Dick Clark mentors him and his scheming ideas for kooky shows. When Penny (Drew Barrymore) enters his life he finally finds love and also a CIA recruiter (George Clooney) sitting on his doorstep. Before long, Barris is debating between a life of killing people and a television career. Clooney also debut directs this film, transferring his real life prankster humor into energy behind the camera success, with a style is so convincing, he should quit his day job as an actor. We are never sure if Barris is paranoid and slightly schizophrenic (making the CIA another one of his lifestyle scams to gain attention as an assassin enthusiast), or if he really had a CIA woman (Julia Roberts) in his life. Rockwell is so convincing as Barris (especially in “The Gong Show” scene), he’s more Chuck Barris then well, Barris. Amusing cameos include everybody from Jaye P. Morgan to the “Unknown Comic” to “Gene, Gene, The Dancin’ Machine”.
Company Men
(rated PG-13)
An irreverent spy romp about one blissfully incompetent hero who bumbles his way into history. It’s the early ‘60’s and while the rest of the world is swingin’, Allen Quimp (Douglas McGrath) is working as a Connecticut school teacher. Though Quimp is happy with this routine, his nagging social diva wife Daisy (Sigourney Weaver) definitely is not. Pushed to seek a higher profile job in the city, Quimp figures he’s got nothing to lose and concocts an elaborate story that he signed up with the CIA. More Austin Powers than James Bond, Quimp manages to become a key player in a number of top secret international plots, including the defection of a famous Russian dancer (Ryan Phillippe) and a plan to overthrow Cuba’s Fidel Castro (Anthony Lapaglia) snowballing into the infamous Bay of Pigs. Combining intelligent political humor (think the Nixon farce “Dick”) and physical comedy for an engaging and unique film (also starring Denis Leary, Alan Cumming, John Turturro and Heather Matarazzo.) This co-written and co-directed story comes from Douglas McGrath (Academy Award nominated for “Bullets Over Broadway” and writer/director of the highly acclaimed “Emma.”)
Committed
(rated PG-13, 98 mins.) Heather Graham plays a young Bohemian style SoHo woman who, convinced she can save her marriage (secured by only a tattooed wedding band), drives 2,000 miles west on a comic adventure to track down her wayward husband (Luke Wilson).
Along the way she has close calls with a pair of highway robbers, a Mexican witchdoctor and a Don Juan type seducer (Goran Visnji) who steals the movie with his seductive lines. As Graham stakes out her husband’s trailer from her car, Visnji joins her on his lawnchair just outside the driver’s side window.
While Graham’s morals are higher stakes in this story than previous roles as both Felicity Shagwell in Austin Powers or the Rollergirl in “Boogie Nights”, she shows lateral acting choices in character depth. She remains ditzy despite the fact that her character does a little inner searching in this crazy hubby chase of a story. Casey Affleck in a supporting role as her weird brother is not much to marvel at either. What starts out as a cute movie ends up being a movie about a stalker girl who is determined to test their vows of marital bliss, despite the fact he doesn’t want or could care less about her. And, after a while, neither can we.
Collateral Damage
(Rated R, 115 mins.) With all the hype of its original release held back in wake of 9/11, the story of a firefighter who vows revenge on the terrorists that blow up his wife and child in a downtown building, is now hitting the screen. Except the terrorists are Colombian not Arabs. Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) directs Arnold Schwarzenegger who takes the law into his own hands when the CIA won’t help him get to the bad guys. Unlike most action films, this one is not energetic enough despite a long setup of exposition that should pay off in act two. John Turturro has a brief but movie stealing scene as a cellmate in a Colombian prison that momentarily elevates Arnold’s role. While Arnold’s screen presence once made him a god not an actor, and he’s in need of a recent hit, this eerie movie in a time where a nation is not healed, is not the way to do it. Sure, he kicks butt on the bad guys which is something we’d like to do to Bin Laden, but all the biceps and “I’ll be back” one liners don’t work like they used to in a country forever changed. This is one battle even Ah-nuld can’t win.