The 32 greatest George Clooney movies
Nov. 15, 2024When he left ER, George Clooney’s star only got bigger
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George Clooney has come a long way from television emergency rooms. He’s regarded as one of the most prolific (and most handsome) movie stars of all time. But which George Clooney movies are actually the greatest of all time?
After graduating high school and working jobs like stock boy and going door-to-door selling insurance – not to mention failing to make it in pro baseball, being cut from tryouts for the Cincinnati Reds – Clooney caught the acting bug when he became an extra in a 1978 TV miniseries filmed in Clooney’s hometown. After years of guest and supporting roles on the small screen, Clooney made his way to the ER in, what else, ER, as the chiseled Dr. Doug Ross in the wildly successful network medical drama. It wasn’t long before Clooney’s profile got bigger when he successfully made the leap to movies.
With all of that in mind, here are 32 of the greatest George Clooney movies of all time.
32. One Fine Day (1996)
After cultivating his star on primetime television, George Clooney leapt to the big screen; among his first movies as a leading man was the romantic comedy One Fine Day, opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. The movie follows one peculiar day in the lives of two extremely busy single parents – played by Clooney and Pfeiffer – who wind up spending a rollercoaster 12 hours with each other after their respective kids miss a field trip. (Naturally, sparks fly even with their rambunctious kids tagging along.) With Pfeiffer as his primary screen partner, One Fine Day is a tender and funny glimpse of what’s about to come from a soon-to-be major movie star.
In an amusing nod to his starring role on ER, George Clooney has a novelty voiceover cameo in the 1999 South Park movie South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. When prone-to-death Kenny is once again severely hurt, his friends whisk him to a hospital where he goes under the knife of Dr. Gouache (voiced by Clooney). Unfortunately, the good doctor swaps Kenny’s heart for a baked potato, which ultimately kills Kenny whose soul ends up in Hell. But don’t worry, that’s just thebeginningof the movie…
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While it has dubious recognition as one ofDisney’s biggest box office flops, Tomorrowland has some merit as an entertaining and sometimes gorgeous piece of science fiction. The movie stars George Clooney as a former child inventor who has grown into a cynical recluse in a futuristic parallel dimension known as “Tomorrowland.” He’s soon visited by a teenager (Britt Robertson), who urges Clooney’s Frank Walker to show her Tomorrowland to save their home Earth. Although Disney clearly hoped Tomorrowland would launch a new franchise in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean, it didn’t take off like a rocket. But between Clooeny and the Space Age-inspired vision exhibited by director Brad Bird – also of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles – Tomorrowland is more than worth a day pass.
The onscreen reunion of George Clooney and Julia Roberts as a romantic pair was staged in the breezy rom-com Ticket to Paradise, from director Ol Parker. Clooney and Roberts play a divorced couple who agree to put aside their differences and stop their daughter’s seemingly hasty marriage to her new boyfriend in Indonesia. While Ticket to Paradise isn’t exactly heaven on Earth, Clooney and Roberts' chemistry is irresistible, and the movie takes full advantage of its stars' comfort and familiarity with one another to effortlessly entertain.
It’s hard to eclipse a movie like Andrei Tarkovsky’s landmark 1972 sci-fi Solaris, which is why director Steven Soderbergh didn’t even want to try. (In interviews, he stated he was hewing more closely to the original 1961 Polish novel by Stanislaw Lem.) Although Tarkovsky is inescapable, Sodebergh’s film is an admirable effort, thanks in large part to George Clooney. The actor stars as Dr. Kelvin, a psychologist sent to a space station to investigate a strange happening aboard. As soon as he gets there, he’s himself subjected to visions of his late wife. Both versions of Solaris wrestle with themes like reality and memory, but each offers its own escape.
In this post-financial crisis thriller, George Clooney plays a charismatic financial advisor on TV who is taken hostage by a disgruntled viewer (Jack O’Connell) who blames him for his bankruptcy. Julia Roberts co-stars as his quick-thinking producer, who supports Clooney from afar as he’s forced to stand before a loaded gun. Money Monster, directed by actress Jodie Foster, isn’t as suspenseful or propulsive as it maybe ought to be, given its preoccupation with responsibility and harsh lessons learned. But Clooney admirably shoulders the movie to the finish line.
In this homage to classic 1940s film noir from director Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney plays American journalist Jake Geismer who, while on assignment covering peace negotiations during World War II, gets caught up in a mystery by an old lover (Cate Blanchett). Intentionally and purposefully staged like a ’40s movie – right down to its uses of 32mm lenses that were used during the period – The Good German makes a good case that George Clooney could have been a star in any time in Hollywood history.
For so long, Batman & Robin was deemed one of the worst movies of all time to the point it “ruined” the Batman franchise (until Christopher Nolan’s gritty reboot some years later). But after an abundance of overly-aggressive dark superheroes, Joel Schumacher’s camp-inspired kaleidoscope has aged impressively well. In Batman & Robin, George Clooney steps up as the new Caped Crusader, as Batman and his ward Robin (Chris O’Donnell) team up with Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) to stop a new alliance of villains, Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and Mister Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Batman & Robin is loaded with corny zingers and doesn’t take itself too seriously – but maybe that’s what good comic book movies should be anyway.
War is hell, and amid the bodies and bloodshed, someone has to save the art. In The Monuments Men, directed by and starring George Clooney, a group of art historians team up during World War II to save priceless works of art from destruction by the Nazis. Loosely based on real-life people (the movie adapts the nonfiction book Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter), The Monuments Men tells an admirable story about what is really lost in the fogs of war.
In the early years of pro American football, players wore flimsy leather caps which barely protected their noggins from the sport’s brutality. Such lunkheaded energy is everywhere in George Clooney’s Leatherheads, a period sports comedy. Clooney dons the muddy jersey of Dodge Connelly, captain of the Duluth Bulldogs who recruits a former college football star and World War I hero, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski). While the beautiful sport of football starts to thrive, Dodge’s life spirals as he enters a love triangle with Carter for the affections of a beautiful Chicago Tribune reporter (Renée Zellweger). Leatherheads is as smart as playing without a helmet, but it’s a hell of a time in the end zone.
George Clooney helms this sizzling political thriller that goes deep behind the rallies and the cameras. Ryan Gosling stars as a press secretary who is initially loyal to a superstar politician, Governor Mike Morris (Clooney) until a personal scandal involving a pretty intern (Evan Rachel Wood) challenges his resolve. No one said Washington D.C. was sunshine and rainbows, and Clooney’s The Ides of March revels in the dark underbelly of America’s capital, where ethics and ambition are as hotly contested as polls and votes.
The manicured magazine sheen of this Hollywood rom-com betrays the sharp comic genius within; it’s less surprising when you know it’s written and directed by the Coen Brothers. In Intolerable Cruelty, George Clooney plays a charismatic divorce attorney who goes toe-to-toe with a drop-dead beautiful socialite (Catherine Zeta-Jones). A complicated romance blooms even when they stand on opposite sides of the courtroom. Love isn’t patient, love isn’t kind – but it’s still hot, as evidenced by Clooney and Zeta-Jones in this sharp-tongued comedy.
George Clooney can never play James Bond, but he makes a great case for playing his rival in The American. In this handsome spy/suspense thriller, Clooney stars as a top assassin who botches a job and retreats to a scenic Italian countryside for one final assignment. As he falls for a beautiful prostitute (Violante Placido) and strikes up a friendship with a priest (Paolo Bonacelli), Clooney’s Jack begins to consider a totally new life until the ruthlessness of his profession calls him again. Delectable and precise, The American is a stylish enigma, like an alluring stranger staring across the room.
Time to get the gang together again. After Ocean’s Twelve, George Clooney reunited with director Steven Soderbergh and co-stars Matt Damon and Brad Pitt for a third round in Ocean’s Thirteen. Clooney returns as master thief Danny Ocean, who reassembles his group to steal from another ruthless Las Vegas casino magnate (Al Pacino); this time, they get small, reluctant help from their former enemy, Terry (Andy García). While both Ocean’s sequels pale in comparison to the original, Ocean’s Thirteen brings the fun back to the series with a stacked deck.
In this pitch black comedy from the Coen Brothers, George Clooney appears as a federal marshal whose philandering places him in the middle of an attempted blackmail by dimwit gym employees – played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand – against a former CIA agent (John Malkovich) who is just trying to write a memoir. While Clooney isn’t a driving force in the plot, he’s in fine form as a charming serial cheater; that he’s briefly the only one who really excites McDormand’s profoundly lonely Linda is just a little tragic.
This is the story of C Company. From writer and director Terrance Malick, and based on James Jones' 1962 novel, The Thin Red Line follows U.S. Soldiers on the frontlines of World War II – played by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, and more – who stare into the abyss of humanity during the bloody Battle of Mount Austen in Guadalcanal. George Clooney has a very minor role, but it’s a critical one, as his Capt. Charles Bosche makes a big show of himself beating his chest and saying a whole lot of nothing to the annoyance of Sean Penn’s Sgt. Welsh. Clooney isn’t among the headlining stars, but The Thin Red Line is too majestic and expansive to not consider it one of his finest films.
So much of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity rides on the heightened panic of Sandra Bullock, an astronaut who floats in space after an explosive accident. The movie’s novel sustained one-shot is reliant on Bullock to carry it all the way through from start to finish, and indeed Bullock is up to the task. But George Clooney’s supporting role of a fellow astronaut lends the movie necessary calm for the tension to not feel fatiguing. No one can hear you scream in space, but when George Clooney is there, you can at least take a deep breath.
In this sepia-toned comedy classic from the Coen Brothers, George Clooney leads as Ulysses McGill, a runaway convict in 1930s Mississippi who, along with two other fellow former inmates – played by John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson – embarks on a search for treasure. Entirely by accident, the trio wind up popular folk musicians. In this satirical riff over Homer’s Odyssey that interrogates the meaning of family and the American dream, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a hilarious trek through timeless Americana.
Life isn’t about destinations, but the connections you make along the way. That’s the underlying idea behind Jason Reitman’s romantic dramedy Up in the Air, based on Walter Kirn’s novel. George Clooney stars as corporate downsizer Ryan Bingham, who travels all around America conducting staff layoffs on behalf of (cowardly) employers. While starting a fling with another traveling businesswoman (Vera Farmiga), he meets an ambitious twenty-something colleague (Anna Kendrick) who challenges Ryan to rethink and reorient his life. Set in and around airport terminals, TSA gates, hotels, and conference rooms, Up in the Air finds the depths of humanity in spaces where connections are always fleeting.
Director David O. Russell had numerous blows with George Clooney during the making of Three Kings. That tension is palpable in Clooney’s heated performance as Major Gates, a disillusioned soldier in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War who spearheads a search for buried gold. Three Kings is as fiery as the desert sun, an experimental arthouse movie in the armored shell of a gritty war/heist blockbuster, all loaded with commentary towards America’s history of violent campaigns abroad. In a 1999 interview withEntertainment Weekly, Clooney said: “Will I work with David ever again? Absolutely not. Never. Do I think he’s tremendously talented and do I think he should be nominated for Oscars? Yeah.”
Still fresh from the sanitary operating rooms of ER, George Clooney goes guns blazing in a grimy saloon in Robert Rodriguez’s riotous 1996 vampire Western flick, From Dusk ‘Till Dawn. Clooney co-stars with Quentin Tarantino as fugitive brothers who hold a family hostage as a way to cross into Mexico only to end up trapped in a bar full of bloodsucking vampires. A delirious mix of outlaw Westerns and midnight B-movie horror, From Dusk ‘Till Dawn is the rare horror movie where you’re cheering more than screaming.
The pungent odor of McCarthyism permeates in George Clooney’s dignified period drama Good Night, and Good Luck. Directed by Clooney and co-written by Clooney with Grant Heslov, the movie depicts esteemed CBS news journalist Edward R. Murrow (portrayed in the movie by David Straihairn) who, in 1954, takes a stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his rampant finger-pointing of suspected Communists. Both in real-life and in the movie, Murrow’s public stand against McCarthy is the first domino to fall in finally putting an end to the Wisconsin senator’s crusade. Handsomely helmed by Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck is an instructive piece on bravery, standing by principles, and journalism’s noble mission to speak truth to power.
In this feast for the eyes, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox (based on Roald Dahl’s book) follows charismatic Mr. Fox (Clooney) who briefly risks his happy home life to return to his old ways: thieving, as he plans the greatest chicken heist in history. While Fantastic Mr. Fox tells a rich and heavy story about how old habits die hard, if they indeed die at all, the movie delights via its utterly gorgeous and tactile animation and graceful voiceover performances, with Clooney joined by an ensemble made up of Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, and more.
Tony Gilroy’s blood-boiling legal thriller Michael Clayton is easily one of George Clooney’s finest movies, ever. Clooney takes charge as attorney and “fixer” Michael Clayton, whose latest case has him mend the reputation of his own employer after a lead litigator (Tom Wilkinson) suffers a manic episode amid a billion-dollar lawsuit. As Michael Clayton investigates what has triggered his colleague, he unearths a coverup by one of his clients. It may not look the part of a modern masterpiece, but Michael Clayton is as good as other people say it is, a new millennium classic about the courage of convictions.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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