The Monuments Men (George Clooney, 2014)

4/10
This is a strange, uncertain movie, done in by the fact that it can't decide if it wants to be a comedy or if it wants to be a drama. The end result is that it's not particularly funny and it's not particularly dramatic. George Clooney casts himself and a bunch of buddies who can do comedy (Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean DuJardin, Bob Balaban) so you might think you're getting a WW2-set Ocean's Eleven, but frankly the comedic moments here are so light they make Ocean's Eleven seem downright edgy.
But this is a WW2 movie after all and there has to be some sad parts (spoilers: not everyone in the ensemble makes it to the end) but the characters are sketched so shallow that nothing really registers. And while the real Monuments Men mission was undoubtedly important, the movie is a complete failure at creating any real tension, which makes the whole expedition feel mostly like a lark.
The tonal shifts make the whole movie feel messy and uneven. Murray and Balaban, for instance, are paired off and have a nice, grumpy old men kind of comedic chemistry...meanwhile Cate Blanchett plays her character like she was told she's in Schindler's List II, wringing melodrama out of just about every word.
There's an interesting story in here, and it probably deserved better than this movie, which is not inept enough to be hateable but it doesn't offer much to like about it either. Mostly it just glides by.

The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

8/10
This is a movie with a well-told, tightly wound story that moves along briskly enough that one never loses interest, and features undoutably some of the finest acting you'll see in a movie all year. Clooney, Gosling, Giamatti and Hoffman are all incredible. The dialogue is really snappy, I was reminded of The Social Network in that regard more than once. The problem is that for a movie that does so many things well, instead of ending with a bang, it just sort of seems to fade out. Even as I was watching it I was wondering what they could do for an ending that wouldn't be either melodramatic or insufficient, and I don't think the writers ever answered that problem themselves. The acting is great but the movie itself doesn't really go out of its way to sear itself into your brain. Subtlety is good, but only to a point.