Every Hollywood career has had its share of both triumph and tragedy, but give George Clooney some credit – his has leaned pretty heavily toward the former.

Yes, he unfortunately is the guy who donned the be-nippled Bat-suit in the abysmal Batman & Robin, but aside from a few lesser duds here and there his filmography boasts a pretty high ratio of stellar projects – from last year’s terrific legal thriller Michael Clayton to late 90s masterpieces Three Kings and Out of Sight. Clooney’s track record behind the camera is even better – he actually netted a Best Director nomination for his second film, Good Night, and Good Luck – which bodes well for this week’s Clooney-helmed release Leatherheads: a rough-and-tumble period football flick that’s also a screwball romantic comedy.

For all of Clooney’s success, however, I’ve always felt like some of his films never connected with audiences or critics the way they should have. Here they are, in no particular order:

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Clooney can’t take all the credit for the awesomeness of his directorial debut – with a script by the great Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation., Being John Malkovich) and Sam Rockwell playing the lead, he was in pretty good shape from the get-go. Still, as first efforts go, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a minor miracle, a whip-smart and highly offbeat black comedy about possibly deluded "Gong Show" creator Chuck Barris (Rockwell), who claimed to have led a double life as a covert operative for the CIA.

An energetic and visually rich film about a one-of-a-kind character, Confessions is a self-reflexive comedy, a bizarre spy thriller, and an oddly moving tale about self-image all at once, and provides enjoyable change-of-pace roles for Clooney, as Barris’s gruff CIA handler, Julia Roberts, as an alluring Company woman, and Drew Barrymore, as the television impresario/international superspy’s long-suffering girlfriend.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

This stupendously original Coen Brothers outing might be better known for its terrific vintage/modern bluegrass soundtrack than for the movie itself, but it’s actually become one of my favorites in their entire canon (and that’s saying a lot).

Kinda-sorta inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother is set in the Depression-era South and follows a charismatic ex-con named Ulysses (Clooney) who teams up with two other chain-gang escapees (Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, both great) to journey back to his wife and family and retrieve some buried treasure en route. Their comedic misadventures along the way – involving everything from a devious one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman) to the trio’s inadvertent brush with fame as a bluegrass group called The Soggy Bottom Boys – make for some of the most enjoyably silly Coen comedy since their early hit Raising Arizona, but the gorgeously photographed film somehow manages to live up to its epic inspiration by the end, too.

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

It’s true, this series is little more than a live-action GQ photo spread with a little sub-Guy Ritchie heist mayhem thrown in, but as pure popcorn cinema, you could do a lot worse than the Ocean’s flicks – especially the most recent one.

The most laid-back, low-stakes film in the series, Ocean’s Thirteen isn’t really even about a robbery; in this one, playboy Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his all-star lineup of cronies are out simply to ruin the opening of scumbag Vegas mogul Al Pacino’s luxury hotel-casino, after he screws over their ailing pal Reuben (Elliott Gould, still one of my favorite people in the movies).

Throwing plausibility and seriousness out the window, Ocean’s Thirteen is the snappiest and goofiest of the trilogy, with highlights including Matt Damon wearing a hilarious prosthetic nose and the bumbling twosome of Casey Affleck and Scott Caan inadvertently sparking a labor dispute in Mexico (while involved in a patently ridiculous scheme involving magnetized dice).

The Peacemaker (1997)

A pre-9/11 “serious” action movie about terrorists plotting on U.S. soil, The Peacemaker seems a little quaint these days, but the film – the first release from Dreamworks, actually – still packs a punch thanks to Mimi Leder’s tight, tense direction and the couldn’t-miss pairing of Clooney and Nicole Kidman. He plays a cocky Special Forces officer, she’s a buttoned-down government scientist, and they’re both on the trail of some nukes stolen from a former Soviet state, which – of course – eventually end up on American soil.

No, this isn’t the most original action movie you’ll ever see, but it’s a cut above Hollywood’s usual Tom Clancy ripoff, and suggests that Clooney could have been a credible action hero if that’s the direction he wanted his career to go in. And although some folks, like Roger Ebert, weren’t crazy about the film’s clichéd defusing-the-bomb finale, for my money the ol’ “red digital readout” sequence has rarely been executed as intensely as it is here.

The Perfect Storm (2000)

This one did decent box office and earned a few solid reviews, but I’ve always felt that it deserved a level of appreciation it somehow never got – it has tons more heart than your average “big summer movie.”

Based on Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction bestseller, the film concerns the crew of the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester-based swordfish boat that gets caught up in a cataclysmic Nor’easter while making a last-ditch expedition to the dangerous area of the Atlantic known as the Flemish Cap. Clooney plays the Andrea Gail’s dedicated captain, Billy Tyne; he’s joined by a terrific supporting cast that includes Diane Lane, Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and the ever-underappreciated John Hawkes.

The film’s storm sequences – handled expertly by Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen – are visually spectacular and grippingly intense, but I think The Perfect Storm actually works best as a tribute to a particularly blue-collar brand of heroism; it’s the only summer blockbuster I’ve ever seen in which providing for one’s family and doing an honest days’ work are shown to be just as brave and courageous as, say, battling aliens or hunting for the Ark of the Covenant. Clooney’s monologue about the small joys of being a “swordboat” captain gets me all choked up every time.