George Clooney fights Nazis in 'Monuments Men'

If you look at the lineup of Oscar nominees in any given year, it becomes clear that movies taking place during World War II are heavily represented. There are serious movies, like Schindler's List, The Reader, The Pianist, The Thin Red Line, and Saving Private Ryan, to name just a few, and then there's Quentin Tarantino's recent injection of humor into the genre via Inglourious Basterds. The Monuments Men, which stars George Clooney as a Nazi-fighting commander of a small, scrappy group of fighters, appears to nod to both.

The trailer for the Columbia action thriller, which comes out in prime holiday movie season, December 18, establishes that the stakes are high, but the group is mostly in control. An illustrative scene features Matt Damon frozen in place, explaining that he has stepped on a land mine, while his buddies come in, repeating, "Whadja do that for?" In that sense, it appears the George Clooney-directed feature may also be cribbing from the tone from another actor-directed work, Ben Affleck's Argo, which had real stakes but also a front-and-center sense of humor about the CIA's attempt to get Americans out of Iran during the hostage crisis. Hey, it won the movie a Best Picture Oscar, after all.

I wonder if there's something to the fact that both of these movies have an actor's stamp on them--perhaps it's much harder for a screenwriter to mix humor and drama together on the page, whereas a project with an actor attached has a great first reader to help sell the idea. Just a thought. In the case of The Monuments Men, Clooney co-wrote the screenplay with his frequent production partner Grant Heslov (The Men Who Stare at Goats, and producer of Affleck's Argo), based on a nonfiction book. Argo took a similar path, adapting a magazine article that outlined true events. Affleck's only additional credit was for producing, not writing, though it's worth noting he did win an Oscar for the screenplay he wrote with Damon for Good Will Hunting. With summer movie season winding down, 'tis the season for great-looking trailers for fall and winter movies. For the time being, we're riding high, ignoring the inevitable letdown some of these movies will bring.