timeless clooney: a guest post by dan braun

You know he's not perfect. Of course he's not. Minus the luxuries, the casual grin emanating from countless magazine covers, ultimately he's as human as you and I are. But if there was ever anyone who, as a guy, you'd want to be your wing man in the Meatpacking District on a Saturday night or, as a lady, proof that velvet ropes are sometimes little more than a formality, it's George Clooney.

It's the rare screen talent who qualifies as timeless. Meryl Streep, Russell Crowe... a short list and one that Clooney fits in with ease. His early acting credits are typical of just about any actor or actress looking to establish a professional foothold: the TV series one-off appearances and recurring roles ("Riptide," "Hunter," "The Facts of Life," "Roseanne") and the cluster of B-movie roles (Return to Horror High, Return of the Killer Tomatoes!, Red Surf). Then came the breakthrough; "ER" and the part of Dr. Doug Ross. Suddenly an established star and the eventual transition to feature films.

Confidence, charm, talent, and an underlying sense of humanity can open a million doors and it's that combination of traits which have allowed Clooney the ability to slip with seeming ease into the shoes of characters from several walks of life - among others, bank robber, U.S. Army Major, television news producer, corporate downsizing expert, and, in his most recent role, a business and family man trying to hold his life together in The Descendants.

Some of his most notable performances:

Out of Sight (1998) - The first pairing of a highly successful professional partnership with director Steven Soderbergh (the Oceans films, as well as the vastly underrated Solaris remake and The Good German) featured Clooney as a career bank robber who breaks out of jail and kidnaps a U.S. Marshal (Jennifer Lopez) in the process. Fun and loose, with a highly palpable on-screen chemistry between Clooney and Lopez.

Three Kings (1999) - Clooney - as U.S. Army Major Archie Gates - and his fellow soldiers (Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze), post-Persian Gulf War, go in search of a cache of gold stolen from Kuwait which they hope to keep for themselves and encounter an unexpected humanitarian crisis.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) - With Senator Joe McCarthy at the height of his anti-Communist crusade, CBS News reporter Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), with the support of his producer Fred Friendly (Clooney), decide to take on McCarthy and expose his tactics, but at a great personal cost for both Murrow and Friendly. A stunning film and powerfully subtle.

Up in the Air (2009) - In a performance which lingers within one's mind long after, Clooney portrays Ryan Bingham, a specialist in corporate downsizing and a motivational speaker who approaches his personal life with as minimal an amount of emotional involvement as he does his professional one.

The Descendants (2011) - Alexander Payne's first feature since 2004's Sideways and similar in its observations on the complexities of human emotions and relations. Clooney is Matt King, a Honolulu-based lawyer who, with his wife on life support after a boating accident, works to build a relationship with his two daughters (Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller) he's barely made time for previously, and finds himself dealing with the news of an affair his wife was having at the time of her accident, all while handling a complex family trustee matter. His performance brilliantly embodies the unenviable position most of us have been in at one time or another: dealing with a series of personal crises coming at us in rapid succession and presenting a bold front while, on the inside, we've never felt more scattered.

-Dan Braun

top 10 films of 2009

For film lovers, this will likely be remembered as the year of Avatar. James Cameron's sci-fi action romance is already a towering global phenomenon. But that film does not make my Top 10. There was a lot of unusual works that relied less on CGI and more on authenticity, good writing and good acting. Those were the films that moved me the most.

Here's my top 10. What are some of your favorites?

10. Seraphine

Martin Provost's sublime, loving film shows the relationship between an artist who literally lives on and through her work and the man, Wilhelm Udhe, who by happenstance discovers and nurtures her talent. It's an illuminating picture and never condescending.

9. Bright Star

Jane Campion's dramatization of the romance between Fanny Brawne and John Keats is a lush, sweet and ultimately tragic affair.

8. Broken Embraces

Not Almodovar's best by any means but still a masterly depiction of lost, unfinished art, a doomed affair and a film within a film within a film.

7. A Serious Man

Funny use of the Book of Job in the life of Jewish professor in Minnesota suburb. One of the more personal Coen Brothers films with wonderful cinematography by Roger Deakins.

6. Crazy Heart

Familiar but surprisingly lithe country singer redemption tale with a career best performance from Jeff Bridges and a rousing T Bone Burnett score.

5. Inglourious Basterds

Tarantino's cinematic revenge on the Nazis recalls screwballs like To Be or Not to Be and spaghetti westerns.

4. Up in the Air

Pertinent to our era, George Clooney is perfectly cast as slick corporate assassin who begins to realize his alienation.

3. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Powerful, unsentimental drama of abused teen who is awakened through reading and writing. Mo'Nique gives an unforgettable performance as abusive mother.

2. The White Ribbon

Unsettling look at the roots of evil as mysterious events unfold in a German village on the eve of WWI.

1. The Hurt Locker

The skill Kathryn Bigelow displays as a director in the film's bomb dismantling sequences are at times breathtaking. But this is also a careful and unusual character study that refreshingly offers no answers or simplistic depictions.

There were a lot of perfectly good films in '09 that didn't make this list. All of them are unique visions and worthy of some kind of praise.

They include

Goodbye Solo, The September Issue, An Education, The Cove, Everlasting Moments, The House of the Devil, Invictus, Me & Orson Welles, 35 Shots of Rum, In the Loop, The Headless Woman, (500) Days of Summer, The Last Station, District 9, Summer Hours, Away We Go, Drag Me to Hell, The Girlfriend Experience, A Single Man

this land is your land

Up in the Air isn't perfect, but by dealing with how we live now, something that most movies with a Hollywood star eschew, it's an enormously refreshing and moving comedy. Trekking one American airport and Hilton hotel to the next, with light luggage and spiffy charcoal suits, Ryan Bingham fires employees so their corporations don't have to while occasionally giving trite motivational speeches at business conferences. His motto is that life should move along breezily (as the film does in its sparkling first half)--not to be slowed down by accouterments and personal relationships ("the slower we move, the faster we die"). Ryan's cool, controlled life is slowly unraveled by three events: the arrival of a plucky, but naive, new hire (Anna Kendrick), his sister's impending wedding and a romance with his flirtatious doppelganger ("just picture you with a vagina," she says, played with perfection by Vera Farmiga).

The film is terrifically cast. George Clooney continues to be Hollywood's best man, our Don Draper/GQ archetype: flat, never ruffled, self-sufficient and hot in a suit. Yet, with this role, he manages to align gloss with gravitas. It's his best performance. Newcomer Kendrick stomps into the film as the ultimate HR horror show. With her boxy suit and uber-tight pontytail, she is whip smart and robotically efficient with all things technical but hopelessly juvenile with emotional matters. To watch these two characters spar and subtly (and with believability) change into human beings is a wonderful gift from the actors.


The travel/road movie is worn territory--wandering about before a family event (weddings, births, child beauty pageants) yet Up in the Air is distinctly placed in the heat of the recession. At the end of this decade, with outsourcing and technology rapidly replacing human interaction, the country's economic future has never been so uncertain (and so grim). Director Jason Reitman (Juno) gives incredibly moving moments to non actors, recently laid off (from jobs in St. Louis and Detroit), to say what they had said and what they had wanted to say. Some critics have called it exploitation, especially when intertwined with the cool glamour of Clooney, and yet I can't imagine how Reitman could've done it differently or better. How rare it is for a film to be topical without being preachy. Unlike the corporations portrayed and much of what Hollywood coldly delivers as "product," here is a film, chock-full of contradictions, that dares to show the importance of human connection. It's by no means a crowd-pleaser, but winningly Capra-esque. ***1/2

-Jeffery Berg