With a title like The American (the book it's based on is called A Very Private Gentleman), I expected this movie to be one big metaphor for how the U.S. is perceived abroad, especially since the title character is an assassin by trade, hiding out among simple Italian townspeople. And maybe it is: Clooney's butterfly-admiring killer Jack barely speaks the language (though he knows enough to get by), he takes things without paying for them (though he offers), his presence leads to innocent deaths (though not by his hand) and he takes advantage of the town's young women (though, to be fair, that's their job). But the only time Americans are really spoken of in generalities is when a priest tells Jack that Americans are always trying to escape their history. Jack may be, although his deeper past is never brought up, but we do know one thing: he's definitely still dealing with his last trip to Sweden.

Tags: George Clooney, review, The American

The foreigners have spoken! The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has released their nominations for the 2010 Golden Globe Awards, and while there aren't many surprises, they did get the awkward John Krasinski, the annoying Diane Kruger, and the adorable Justin Timberlake to read off the nominees. (While we couldn't stand Diane's totally biased glee at Inglourious Basterds getting a nomination, we loved glasses-wearing JT's realization that Krasinski was gonna get some lovin' from his nominated spouse Emily Blunt.) What follows are the movie nominees; look for the TV nominees over in the Telefile.

Tags: Avatar, George Clooney, Golden Globes, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Mo'Nique, nominations, Nominees, Precious, Sherlock Holmes, Up in the Air

I will admit to a certain amount of disappointment when I heard that Wes Anderson's next film would be a stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox. While I had read the book as a child (along with everything else Dahl had written), it was not a favorite by any means, and, being so enamored of Anderson's live-action work, I assumed that an animated children's film would be bereft of his usual stylistic touches and quirky performances. I have never been so happy to be wrong about anything in my life.

Tags: Fantastic Mr. Fox, George Clooney, Rushmore, Wes Anderson

George Clooney is good at his job. And often, that job is to play the role of a professional who is also good at his job. For example, in Intolerable Cruelty he was a highly sought-after divorce attorney. In Michael Clayton, he was a skilled fixer of embarrassing corporate problems. And in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind he played a killer for the CIA. And because of the soul-crushing nature of all of these jobs, there came a point in each film where we got to see Clooney's character have a breakdown during which he questioned the very fabric of his life, be it high thread-count cotton or a coarse burlap. That moment eventually comes in Up in the Air for Ryan Bingham, the professional axe-man who makes a living telling people they've been fired, but what breaks him isn't the parade of distraught strangers whose lives he ruins day in and day out (albeit in the nicest way possible). No, it's the flying.

Tags: George Clooney, New Moon, Up In the Air

This film is based on a book, which is based on fact ... or some facts. As the opening slate puts it, "More of this is true than you'd like to believe." However, this fictionalized version of those facts really feels like something that came entirely out of the minds of the Coen brothers, and not just because some famous faces from their work (George Clooney, Jeff Bridges) star in this film... though that certainly doesn't help matters at all. But that's not to say that bearing a strong resemblance to a Coens movie is a bad thing -- it's a perfectly fine thing to aspire to. And when it is done well here, it's really funny... but when it isn't, it's pretty dull and boring. Luckily, there's more of the former than the latter, and this ends up being a solid, if not stellar, film.

Tags: Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, The Men Who Stare at Goats

It's been easy to forget that a possible Screen Actors Guild strike is looming over Hollywood like a cloud of L.A. smog. We haven't even talked about it in almost a month. But just because no one is paying attention doesn't mean it's gone away. Quite the contrary in fact.

The latest development (really more of a non-development) was on Saturday, when the SAG board backed its negotiators' efforts to gain more control (and money) from web content that features SAG actors.

Tags: AFTRA, George Clooney, SAG, strike, Tom Hanks

You might think that after his less-than-successful outing with the pigskin, George Clooney would his sights set on a porcine enemy. Instead, he'll be tackling another barn yard animal in the upcoming Men Who Stare At Goats.

The movie is an adaptation of British journalist Jon Ronson's book of the same name. The book, which Ronson also made into a documentary in 2004, concerns the US Army's First Earth Battalion. The First Earth Battalion, despite sounding like something that would be more at home fighting against unspeakably bad John Travolta movies, was apparently an actual, real-world exploration by the military into training people to use "paranormal powers" such as telepathy and ESP in battle and espionage.

Tags: George Clooney, goats, mind bullets, paranormal

It looks like the Coen Brothers might have another success on their hands: Their latest film, Burn After Reading, not only landed at the top box office spot with a $19.4 million opening weekend, but it also helped the whole nation recover from last weekend's embarrassingly low take. Brad Pitt and George Clooney's presence in Burn After Reading might have helped the Coens to such a lofty opening weekend.

Tags: box office, Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading, Coen Bros., George Clooney, Righteous Kill, The Family That Preys, The Women, Tropic Thunder