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This weekend, George Clooney’s sixth directorial effort, Suburbicon, opens in theaters. The film is based on a Coen Brothers script that has been banging around town for about 30 years, with Clooney signing on to direct it at long last. And after casting an all-star trio — Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac — Suburbicon became one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2017. Clooney and company then took the film to the Venice and Toronto so it could premiere at the fall festivals. …And it hasn’t been pretty since.
Currently at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes and falling, Suburbicon has already been thrashed by most American critics. The New York Post‘s Sara Stewart called the film “bizarrely tone-deaf” and a “clumsy” juxtaposition between a more Coens-y farcical storyline and a racially charged subplot. Time‘s Stephanie Zacharek said the film “miss[ed] by a mile” and again cited the film’s problems with tone.
It probably didn’t help that Suburbicon, with its story about angry white suburbanites trying to run a black family out of their neighborhood, carries with it the weight of recent white supremacist actions in the United States. But it’s not a huge surprise to see a George Clooney-directed movie failing to live up to its potential. It’s become positively expected.
Suburbicon makes six movies that Clooney has directed. He’s always seemed like a natural choice to go the actor/director route, if only due to his stature within the industry. He’s a definitional leading man, well-respected in the industry, outspoken about his opinions but never outlandish about it. He’s Robert Redford; he’s Clint Eastwood; take away the part about being well-respected and never being outlandish and he’s Mel Gibson. He’s the quintessential actor who’s always really wanted to direct. And he’s spent much of his career staying close to auteurist filmmakers at whose feet he could learn.
The problem is, those filmmakers Clooney has learned from — specifically the Coen Brothers and Steven Soderbergh — are easy to admire but exceedingly difficult to emulate. Their gift with varying tones and genres isn’t something you just learn by osmosis. We’re reminded of that with every new Clooney movie. The truth of the matter is that George Clooney projects the image of an actor who should be a good director. But the evidence has continued to stack up against him. Before they’re released, Clooney’s movies are already getting Oscar buzz. But should they?
Let’s take a tour through Clooney’s filmography:
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002): This is Clooney’s most often forgotten film, despite the fact that it’s his debut. It got lost in the shuffle at the time as the other screenplay Charlie Kaufman had produced that year that wasn’t Adaptation. For a directorial debut, this is a fairly promising one, and Clooney helps get a great lead performance out of Sam Rockwell. The reviews at the time were heavily complimentary, though it’s notable that even then critics like the L.A. Times‘s Kenneth Turan were calling out Clooney’s missteps with archness.
Good Night and Good Luck (2005): This movie is the reason every subsequent Clooney film has gotten Oscar buzz. We all assume they’re going to match this film’s level of quality. They don’t. This black-and-white, soberly compelling film about Edward R. Murrow holding to his journalistic ideals in the face of McCarthyism felt very much of its time, with defiance against the Bush administration at an all-time high. Six Oscar nominations ensued, including Best Picture and Best Director nods for Clooney. (He got a third nomination that year, for his supporting performance in Syriana, for which he won.) It’s an incredibly solid movie, if not a hugely memorable one, and once again Clooney helps to produce an A+ lead performance, this time from David Strathairn.
Leatherheads (2008): Okay, here’s where the wheels start to come off, not coincidentally when Clooney attempts his most Coens-y movie to date. By this point, Clooney had starred in both O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty for the Coens, two movies of differing quality that both went very broad. And so Clooney’s movie about old-timey football players starring himself, John Krasinski, and Renee Zellweger was a big ol’ farce. Unfortunately that includes how it was received by the public and critics.
The Ides of March (2011): This one has an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is insane, because it is not good. In perhaps the biggest squandering of talent in Clooney’s career, he adapts a play by House of Cards creator Beau Wilimon, casts it with Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, and Jeffrey Wright, and sets out to make a story about corrupt politicians that just goes nowhere. Despite the high RT percentage, many top critics dissented, among them the Times‘ A.O. Scott, who said the film was “missing both adrenaline and gravity” and that it “deals mainly in platitudes and abstractions, with just enough detail to hold your interest and keep you hoping for something more.”
The Monuments Men (2014): Good luck remembering this movie even happened. Touted very early on as an Oscar contender, this movie about a World War II unit sent to recover artwork stolen by the Nazis once again boasted an all-star cast (Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman). There is no shortage of A-list actors clamoring to work with Clooney, that’s for sure. A film like The Monuments Men will make you wonder why, though.
So … how many good movies is that? Rotten Tomatoes will tell you three of those five movies are fresh. Don’t believe it! Still, a track record that includes one great film (Good Night and Good Luck), one promising debut (Confessions), and one moderately well-reviewed squandering of huge potential (Ides) is no disaster. Part of it is that Leatherheads and Monuments Men (and now it looks like Suburbicon) were such BIG failures that the whole filmography looks a little skewed. But part of it is also that Clooney is continually treated like an A-list director because he’s an A-list actor, and Best Director nomination or not, the films as a whole just do not back this up. The ambition is there, the influences are there, the actors are definitely there … but for a very long time, the director hasn’t been there. We’re waiting.
Where to stream Good Night and Good Luck
