Charlie Kaufman is doing adaptations again - this time, the subject is game show creator/host Chuck Barris's cult 'unauthorised autobiography', Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. This is the book in which Barris somewhat bizarrely claims to have secretly been an assassin for the CIA by night while he worked on his TV shows by day. Confessions is George Clooney's directorial debut - and by all accounts, he does a better than average job of it (albeit influenced by the style of collaborator Soderbergh, who has an executive producer credit on this film)

Clooney also co-stars as Barris's CIA handler Jim Byrd, but the real standout performance is reported to be Sam Rockwell (Galaxy Quest, The Green Mile), as Chuck Barris himself, in his first leading role. Other co-stars are Drew Barrymore (who it's good to see taking on some more risky projects in between Charlie's Angels outings) and Julia Roberts. Some of Clooney's actor friends appear in brief cameos

Gentle reader, I'm not going to lie to you - I haven't seen this film. It doesn't even open in Australia until our first week of screenings. However, I can tell you that Kaufman's name on the script is enough reason alone for me to want to watch it - his films are always strikingly original - and it'll be interesting to see how Clooney handles himself as a director, particularly with a script that was widely considered to be unfilmable.

A series of murders in the small Australian town of West Village ((mdash)) the murders of a bikie, a construction worker, a sailor, a cowboy, and an American Indian ((mdash)) suddenly offers a lead when police realise that the theme is the Village People. So who is to be the last victim? Of course: one of the cops

This quirky film has a lot of laughs. The leads, stand-up comics who have worked together for ten years, combine physical comedy and outlandish jokes in a warm-hearted story of bumbling cops with their heart in the right place and a murderer out to get them before they get him. Australian comedy has had a deservedly high reputation for some time, and this film maintains the status quo