George Clooney

By Christopher Campbell The “Jack Ryan” franchise is potentially lucrative but difficult franchise since it lacks an over-arching story and really wants to be more of the American James Bond except less cool and more patriotic which in the books of Tom Clancy usually means jingoistic.  Compound this with the fa...

By Karina Longworth Day 2 at TIFF 2009 brought on the two films at this festival that could be thought of as Juno followups: the Jason Reitman-directed Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a traveling merchant of vocational death and Vera Farmiga as the woman who induces his midlife attack of consciousne...

By Karina Longworth If Goats stopped and started with “Wow, the baby boomers fucked everything up, but their hippie ways sure were comical!” it could be written off as mediocre — in fact, it would still be moderately more entertaining than Taking Woodstock, which essentially has the same thesis. But occasio...

By Christopher Campbell Will Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats be the greatest George Clooney movie of all time? If you’re a fan of the actor/director’s work in Three Kings, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Burn After Reading and Syriana, then it’s possible you’ll see this as the military/CIA satire he’s...

By Christopher Campbell The only Clooney career step I’d like Hamm to avoid is the big budget, non-geek-centric action movie. He doesn’t need a Peacemaker or a Perfect Storm, and we kinda hope he got that sort of thing out of his system with The Day the Earth Stood Still. Plus, Hamm is already entering the film biz late...

By Christopher Campbell No word yet on casting or the unnecessary special effects that will bastardize this remake but let’s see, who in Hollywood could pull off a protagonist who sees things that may or may not be there? Joaquin Pheonix, put down your microphone and dookie gold ropes. Steven Spielberg needs you.

By Christopher Campbell This tale of a sly fox (voiced by George Clooney, natch) taking on some grumpy farmers reminded me a great deal of Chicken Run, if it were inspired less by The Great Escape and more by Ocean’s Eleven, and while it does look perfectly family-friendly, it really does seem to be a Wes Anderson fi...

By Karina Longworth 7. “When Soderbergh made Ocean’s 11 in 2001 you could fill an Olympic sized pool with the art house tears.” 8. “Soderbergh’s real paycheck flick was The Good German . An updated noir vehicle for George Clooney that mucked the line between homage and mockery.”

By Christopher Campbell One of the more obvious influences on Jones’ Moon in terms of the astronaut’s cause of distress, Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of Stanislav Lem’s classic sci-fi novel involves a widowed psychologist sent to a space station in peril, where he is eventually greeted by his dead wife (Nata...

By Christopher Campbell This fits more with a to-be-made topic called #unlikelyprequels, but prequels are kind of considered sequels, so here it’s included. The simple premise: an origin story of Danny Ocean and his crime-caper buddies, set when they were much, much younger. Obviously, despite the fact that Ho...

By Kevin Kelly The closest thing we’ve had to a cinematic adaptation of Stephenson was the announcement, almost two years ago, that the Sci Fi Channel was turning The Diamond Age into a miniseries, with George Clooney and partner Grant Heslov producing while Stephenson himself was going to write the s...

By Christopher Campbell Everybody remembers the bigger name Coen Bros. regulars, such as John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, Billy Bob Thornton and now George Clooney. And of course, there are the one-shot stars, like Nicolas Cage, Gabriel Byrne, Jeff Bridges, William H. Macy, Cathe...

By Karina Longworth That night, at a cocktail party thrown by Cox’s uptight pediatrician wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), we learn a few things: Cox is considered an outcast and a creepazoid by the upper middle class DC nouveau society in which his wife plays; his wife is having an affair with Harry (George Cloone...

By Kevin Kelly I’m working on stealing Tilda (Swinton) away from George (Clooney).  Tilda and I have Benjamin Button coming out in the fall, and Angie and I are working together every day, I guarantee you. Brad Pitt talks about playing an idiot in Burn After Reading, working with the Coen Brothers, and wha...

By Christopher Campbell But will the good reviews make for great box office? Last night, while viewing the latest trailer in a theater with some friends, I mentioned that Wanted was receiving great reviews. Nobody believed me at first, and then they didn’t care; they still thought it looked terrible.