George Clooney --- is there anything you can’t do?  In addition to saving the world and being one of the leading heartthrobs in Hollywood, you’re actually a darn good director in your own right too?  Wow.  Must have been all that time he spent with Steven Soderbergh.  

You’re missing out if you haven’t seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, where Sam Rockwell plays game show impresario Chuck Barris in the adaptation of a perhaps true, perhaps not true memoir that details his time as a CIA hitman.  You should also make sure you’ve seen Good Night, Good Luck, starring David Strathairn, about Edward R. Murrow bringing down Senator Joe Mcarthy.  You can probably skip Leatherheads, though it’s not without its charms here and there.

Anyway, his fourth feature film, The Ides of March, took the number two box office spot this week.  It’s a political thriller about the inner workings of a Democrat’s campaign during the Ohio Primary.  Clooney also steps in front of the camera to play the hard-working candidate and Ryan Gosling is his career-minded press secretary; together, and with the help or hindrances of others, they slog through the ins and outs of a pressure cooker of a campaign.

This movie is really all about the acting.  You’ve got Clooney handing in a great performance.  You’ve got young “it” star of the moment Ryan Gosling spraying the room with a super-soaker full of charisma.  And then you have Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, two of our greatest living acting giants.  Throw in the beautiful and talented Marisa Tomei, plus Jeffrey Wright and Evan Rachel Wood and you’ve got one of the most solid casts that has ever walked the face of the Earth (unless they had some good dinosaur actors I don’t know about).

And the gravitas these actors bring to this movie give it some oomph.  You follow the characters through scenes of campaign touring, shaking hands and kissing babies, making backroom career deals, having sex with each other to get information --- all that political good stuff --- lots of intrigue and betrayal.  There are also plenty of great character moments that give the actors something to chew on while providing depth to the story.

The Ides of March doesn’t really expose any big truth about the lies of politics, but it is interesting to see the backbreaking rigour a candidate goes through on the long road to the election.  It’s a wonder they can even focus on running their staff or sticking to their original goals, after having to make all manner of deals and bargains for leverage and contributions.  The new candidates aren’t as obviously shady as Nixon in the Watergate days --- they are a reflection of the media fuelled world they live in, so there isn’t a great deal of huge scandalous shenanigans portrayed in the movie. You’re not getting a hugely incendiary film or anything --- it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.  But it is well directed, well chosen as material (as Clooney seems to excel at), and extremely well acted.

4 Dorks out of 5 on the Geek-o-Meter!  Really good if you like a pot-boiling political thriller, but if that’s not your thing, you can probably skip it.