The Best and Worst of George Clooney

The "Best and Worst" series profiles the best and worst work of an actor starring in one of the week's new theatrical releases. This week I take a look at the filmography of "Hail, Caesar!" star George Clooney.

Films starring George Clooney that I've seen:
Batman & Robin
The Thin Red Line
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut 
Three Kings
The Perfect Storm
O, Brother Where Art Thou?
Ocean's Eleven
Ocean's Twelve
Michael Clayton
Ocean's Thirteen
Burn After Reading
Up in the Air 
The Ides of March
The Descendants 
Gravity
The Monuments Men
Tommorowland

Best Performance: The Descendants (2011)
Despite being one of the most powerful figures in all of Hollywood, I feel Clooney doesn't get nearly enough props for his acting chops. The strongest evidence of his immense talent came in his highly complex role in Alexander Payne's excellent dramedy The Descendants. Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii-based attorney whose life is turned upside down when he simultaneously finds out that a boating accident has left his wife in coma and that she was having an affair with the real estate agent (Matthew Lillard) that was tasked with selling the valuable piece of land his family owns. Clooney captures the variety of emotions that overcome his character in a very genuine, believable way and his vulnerable performance is the primary reason the film's balance between offbeat comedy and heavy melodrama manages to work so well.  

Worst Performance: Batman & Robin (1997)
Let's get real here, Clooney is hardly the worst thing about Joel Schumacher's idiotic and overly silly take on the Batman universe, but there's no other movie in his filmography where his trademark charisma doesn't flash through for even a millisecond. Clooney chose to play it straight while all of his co-stars were redefining over-the-top acting and it leads to a performance that is just straight-up lifeless.  

Best Film: Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Steven Soderbergh has made multiple films with more depth and lasting impact than Ocean's Eleven, but he's never made anything else that anywhere near as fun. The ensemble cast made up almost exclusively of Hollywood A-listers all kill their respective roles and the climatic heist sequence is cinematic magic at its finest. I can say without hesitation that Ocean's Eleven is one of the most purely entertaining and endlessly rewatchable movies I've ever seen.
 
Worst Film: Tommorowland (2015)
The impressive six-film hot streak Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredible, Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol) started his directional career on came to a screeching halt with the misguided sci-fi "epic" Tommorowland. The film's message of being optimistic about the future is admirable, but when that message comes in a film that contains a wildly incoherent story and about as much intrigue and excitement as a marathon of Antiques Roadshow, it loses all of its effectiveness.  

Thank you for reading this week's installment of "The Best and Worst of". Next week, I'll take a look at the best and worst work of Zoolander 2" star Ben Stiller.