The 20 Best George Clooney Movies

George Clooney has made himself relatively scarce in recent years, especially in front of the camera. He’s starred in just a couple of movies and directed some forgettable ones; put together, this makes it easy to forget just how sterling his overall track record has been.

While his directing career has favored middle-of-the-road throwbacks, occasionally successful (Good Night, and Good Luck) and often turgid (The Monuments Men), Clooney’s big-screen acting career—essentially restarted, in the wake of ER, when he starred in From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996—has been a model of combining movie-star charisma with serious-actor ambition. He has long-term collaborations with real-deal geniuses (the Coen Brothers; Steven Soderbergh); one-off work with an eclectic mix of auteurs (Alexander Payne, Anton Corbijn, Alfonso Cuarón) and occasional dashes of voiceover or cameo whimsy. Though he obviously has a weakness for middlebrow old-school respectability and has sometimes been overshadowed by younger co-stars like Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, it’s also arguable that guys like Damon and Pitt have essentially been emulating Clooney’s circa-1998 career reset in their loyalty to major artists and avoidance of superhero tentpoles. (Clooney himself can’t ever stop talking about what a bad job he did in Batman & Robin, but that movie’s flop probably helped keep at least a handful of superstars out of franchise nightmares for upwards of a decade.)

Accordingly, Clooney’s best movies can probably stand up to just about any contemporary star—and he’s the only one who played the president in the Spy Kids universe. So let’s take a tour of Clooney’s best and appreciate his 21st-century ability to summon gravitas, and then undermine it for a laugh when necessary.

Here are the 20 best George Clooney movies:

20. The DescendantsYear: 2011
Director: Alexander Payne
Stars: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller, Beau Bridges, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Robert Forster
Rating: R
Runtime 115 minutes

Alexander Payne’s dramedies usually have a funnier, more satirical edge; his adaptation of the Kaui Hart Hemmings novel is somehow both rougher and less lacerating, because its characters are a bit more forthright in their grief and anger, making fewer fumbling attempts at social niceties. This puts Clooney’s performance as Matt King, the trustee of a land-owning Hawaiian family coping with his wife’s impending death, front and center. He’s supported by an eclectic ensemble that includes Shailene Woodley, Robert Forster, Matthew Lillard, Beau Bridges and Judy Greer, but the camera is never far from Clooney’s face, searching for a way through the emotional mess in front of him. Payne uses Clooney’s authority and confidence beautifully: Matt spends much of the movie trying to figure out the practical logistics of improving himself as a father and a man, because it seems like his chance to improve as a husband is about to pass.—Jesse Hassenger

19. The AmericanYear: 2010
Director: Anton Corbijn
Stars: George Clooney, Johan Leysen, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli, Irina Björklund, Filippo Timi
Rating: R
Runtime: 105 minutes

The American casts George Clooney’s stolid hermit as a symbol of Anton Corbijn’s America. Or, at least, of a successful America: ultra-stylized, disciplined, über-masculine, totally humorless. This is super-serious Clooney, Michael Clayton without the swagger. He’s tattooed as if his skin is his dress uniform, he works out the same way daily, visits the same prostitute, has sex at the same inexorable pace, never smiles—in these patterns he conditions every fiber of his being to act excluded from everything around him. He’s like Alain Delon in Le Samourai or Ghost Dog in Ghost Dog, a shadow of a shadow of some deeply inscribed archetype that may or may not be American, but definitely represents that to which America aspires. And he’s a hitman. Or he’s just really good with guns, and by default good at killing people. We’re never really told which is which. Which is how murder works in The American: with the utilitarian grace of someone who lists it on his resume, right alongside “building guns,” which we learn is what Clooney’s character is doing as his final “job,” and which he treats as sacredly as a samurai treats respect, ritual and tradition. The gun is definitely this man’s tool of choice, and wrapped up in the movie’s long scenes of a scowling George Clooney meticulously crafting a weapon, brow leaden with concentration, is the all-American phallus, penetrating the frontier, toughness and vigilance and solitude one’s only means of survival. He spends a lot of time seemingly doing nothing, and we surmise he’s waiting for something to happen. No wonder Corbijn cites Sergio Leone as a major influence, even directly referencing him inside the film; Corbijn’s movie is as starkly stylized, hushed and palled with dread as any of Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Clooney’s American is entirely boring and ordinary outside of his inhuman precision. He’s macho impulse and mechanized calculation, and that’s pretty much it. Similarly boring assassins try to kill him. (What kind of elite assassin drives a Ford Focus hatchback?) Maybe he feels that life can be lived no other way for a man like him; in a godless universe he finds form within chaos and survives. But it’s a shallow and stupid way of living, especially for such a supposedly, deeply intelligent character. And as a movie ready to fit itself into a discussion of America’s epic machismo on an international scale, The American is a deeply singular meditation on the total uselessness of the kind of ego it takes to be a really lonely human being. —Dom Sinacola

18. Ocean’s TwelveYear: 2004
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Andy García, Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 125 minutes

The least-loved of the Steven Soderbergh Ocean’s trilogy may catch some flak for some vacation-video smugness, like it’s a big-budget version of one of those patented George Clooney pranks that get talked up during the promotional rounds. But on the other hand, if your vacation videos looked this great, wouldn’t you want plenty of people to see them? The real problem with this intentionally convoluted, self-referential sequel is that the group mechanics aren’t quite as well-calibrated as in the movies that came before or after, awkwardly sidelining chunks of the gang seemingly on a whim. With his comedy-of-remarriage material behind him, Clooney is more ringmaster here than debonair star, but that’s part of the movie’s subversive charm—as is the running gag about Matt Damon, at this point a bona fide Jason Bourne superstar, begging for a better role and getting treated like the annoying kid brother. Ocean’s Twelve came at the end of a four-year period when almost all of Clooney’s starring roles were either goony comedy for the Coen Brothers, or genre-hopping experiments with Soderbergh, so it’s appropriate that this is the closest his controlled Soderbergh movies ever got to Coens-comedy-style anarchy.—Jesse Hassenger

17. Intolerable CrueltyYear: 2003
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Stars: George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer, Edward Herrmann, Paul Adelstein, Richard Jenkins, Billy Bob Thornton
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 100 minutes

Though often dismissed as a minor work in the Coen Brothers canon (perhaps because it marked the first time the two accepted a “writers-for-hire” job), Intolerable Cruelty nevertheless yields enough of the filmmaking team’s trademark incisive wit and colorful characters to make it well worth a viewing. A more modern take on the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, the film stars George Clooney as an esteemed, albeit highly neurotic, divorce attorney who finds himself romantically intertwined with the estranged wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) of one of his clients. Boasting a flurry of sexy, Tracy/Hepburn-esque banter and enough surrealist flourishes to scratch the Coens’ arthouse itch (recurring scenes of Clooney visiting his firm’s sickly senior partner are a major highlight), Intolerable Cruelty proves that, even when the brothers aren’t quite firing on all cylinders, they can still produce exemplary work.—Mark Rozeman

16. Burn After ReadingYear: 2008
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Stars: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich
Rating: R
Runtime: 96 minutes

This Coen Brothers favorite has an unsurprisingly incredible cast, but can we take a moment to give all of the awards and props to Frances McDormand? Her Linda Litzke is one of the strangest, most hilariously bizarre characters to ever appear in a film, and yet there’s something completely familiar about her. She’s pursuing her own version of the American Dream, and the mess she leaves in her wake makes up the crux of this very black, very funny comedy. That she does so while all the other members of this ensemble do the same, and manage to entangle their own personal dramas with hers, makes this movie an entertaining way to spend an evening. Along with McDormand, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins (who plays the tragically adorable Ted) all give fantastic turns—unrecognizable, in many ways, from their typical fare which makes the story all the more enthralling.—Garrett Martin

15. Michael ClaytonYear: 2007
Director: Tony Gilroy
Stars: George Clooney, Tom Wilkenson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Michael O’Keefe, Merritt Wever
Rating: R
Runtime: 119 minutes

The parade of high-profile business scandals in the 21st century make the central thesis of Tony Gilroy’s directorial debut all the more discomforting to accept: that even those callous corporate masterminds and their big-shot lawyers have conflicts of conscience, too. Gilroy introduces his three leads in short order, each one a pawn in a $3 billion class-action lawsuit against fictional agrochemical giant U/North: Attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) gets reduced to a manic-depressive wreck. Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), U/North’s lead counsel, internalizes her anxiety, masking it with carefully constructed appearance and well-rehearsed press responses. Then there’s Michael Clayton himself, played with world-weary resolve by George Clooney, who must face a series of moral dilemmas in which his corporate instinct for self-preservation collides with his sense of humanity. Gilroy maintains a fine balance as he portrays the lives of these three lonely souls while keeping his intricately crafted plot in constant motion. Blending elements of crime drama, paralegal thriller, and a dash of the espionage action he perfected while working on the Bourne trilogy, Gilroy delivers a script that reflects his rare ability to pose complex moral questions while simultaneously drawing his audience deeper and deeper into the action. Shot against the cold, hive-like palaces of Manhattan’s Corporate Row, Michael Clayton deftly portrays the bewilderment of the people who find themselves trapped within the corporate culture. It’s scary to think that the mega-conglomerates that dominate America’s economy are heartless machines, but even scarier to imagine that they just might be human after all. —Jeremy Goldmeier

14. Hail, Caesar!Year: 2016
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Stars: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Alden Ehrenreich, Christopher Lambert, Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 106 minutes

The period zaniness of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Hail, Caesar! is an ode to old Hollywood—and much more—as only they can do, tracing the efforts of James Brolin’s studio scandal fixer through a parade of 1950s soundstages, back lots and actors. His latest potential headline concerns the abduction of a Biblically epic movie star—George Clooney having a helluva good time doing his best Chuck Heston/Kirk Douglas amalgam—by what turns out to be a tea sandwich-serving think tank of communists. Other subplots have Scarlett Johansson’s starlet plotting out her unwed motherhood in the public eye and the screen makeover of an unsophisticated cowboy by Ralph Fiennes’ debonairly enunciating director, Laurence Laurentz. There are dueling gossip columnist twins (Tilda Swinton pulling double duty), a hapless film editor (Frances McDormand) and scattered movies-within-the-movie, which even pauses midway through for a thoroughly enchanting—and cheeky—Gene Kelly-styled song-and-dance number starring Channing Tatum as a heavily made-up matinee star with controversial extracurricular activities. Most of the main characters/performances take blatant inspiration from Hollywood legends of yore, and the cast seems to have as much fun as the Coens. Hail, Caesar! is by no means their best work, but it’s characteristically gorgeous, spiritedly acted and rife with political, religious and creative (sub)text for moviegoers as thoughtful and dorky as Joel and Ethan themselves. —Amanda Schurr

13./12. Spy Kids/Spy Kids 3D: Game OverYear: 2001, 2003
Directors: Robert Rodriguez
Stars: Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Elijah Wood, Ricardo Montalbán, Holland Taylor, Mike Judge, Salma Hayek, Matt O’Leary, Emily Osment, Cheech Marin, Bobby Edner, Courtney Jines, Robert Vito, Ryan Pinkston, Danny Trejo, Alan Cumming, Tony Shalhoub, Sylvester Stallone
Rating: PG
Runtime: 88 minutes, 84 minutes

Admittedly, George Clooney’s work as Devlin, a higher-up overseeing the espionage exploits of the whimsically talented Cortez family (Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa PenaVega, Daryl Sabara), is more symbolic than anything: Of Clooney’s Hollywood-royalty status, of his loyalty to director Robert Rodriguez, who directed him in his first real movie-star turn, and of the happy-familia vibes of Rodriguez’s enormously likable and entertaining trilogy of family films. Devlin may not have a character arc beyond his ascent from head spy to the U.S. presidency somewhere between the first and third movies (he sits out the wonderful Spy Kids 2, arguably the best of the series), but it speaks well of Rodriguez’s ability to make his work feel warmly handmade that he could recruit Clooney for repeated family reunions.—Jesse Hassenger