"Rockwell is spot-on as Barris, and Clooney directs with entertaining style and flair." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67/100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 10, 2003. Sam Rockwell won the Silver Bear for Best Actor and George Clooney was nominated the Golden Bear but lost to Michael Winterbottom of In This World. Roger Ebert gave Confessions of a Dangerous Mind a positive review, awarding it 3 out of 4 stars. "George Clooney's directorial debut is not only intriguing as a story but great to look at," Ebert said, "a marriage of bright pop images from the 1960s and 1970s and dark, cold spyscapes that seem to have wandered in from John le Carré." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the film carried a perfect balance of dark humor and psychological drama. "Clooney tackles a far-reaching absurdist fantasy with Barris as a paradigm of paranoia," Travers reviewed. "He wisely hooks up with talent he worked with as an actor: cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, from Three Kings (1999), and editor Stephen Mirrione from Ocean's Eleven (2001)." Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "there may be more entertaining and less problematic movies, but Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has something about it that hangs in there, working on the mind like a dog gnawing on a table leg. The movie makes a case for itself through sheer oddness and perversity. I'm not sure Confessions is a good movie, but I am sure I like it." Owen Gleiberman, writing in Entertainment Weekly, observed that "Sam Rockwell is handsome in a rumpled, slightly goofy rabbit-toothed way, but he doesn't really have the look, or aura, of a movie star," Glieberman stated. "He's more like a weirdly sincere space cadet, babbling to himself with puppyish befuddlement, breaking into funky soft dance moves that look as if he's been doing them in his bedroom since he was 8. All of which makes him an inspired choice to play Chuck Barris." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times gave a negative review. He disliked the characterization of Chuck Barris and commented that "with its multiplicity of over-stylized looks and slick gimmicks, Dangerous Mind was doubtless more stimulating to direct than it will be for audiences to experience." Internet reviewer James