You can say a lot of things about George Clooney but there is one incontestable truth about the man: He is a movie star. The Twitter age has broken our artistic public figures down into celebrities, actors, Youtube phenoms, reality "stars" (and this is indeed a category of its own) and "that guy/girl in that show/movie." But the old fashioned movie star is becoming a rare beast. Clooney keeps his Acting (Syriana), his acting (Ocean's Eleven), his filmmaking (Good Night, and Good Luck), his cheeky boy shenanigans, informed crusading and charming talk show guest antics in perfect balance in a handsome without being threatening (or constructed) package that women adore and men aspire to that cuts across LGBT lines. He owns an Italian villa! About the only people who can't stand him are Republicans, and judging by what he's said in the press, he doesn't care.

Clooney is Hollywood's reigning golden boy and so no awards season crop of films would be complete without him. His march to glory started last week at the Golden Globes (Clooney's favorite event, as there's wine at the dinner table) when he won the best actor prize for The Descendants (the film won best dramatic feature). It's a strong performance, but only one of two currently floating around in the awards ether. The other is his fourth directorial effort, the ominously titled The Ides of March. Both are dramas about complex men at major life crossroads but the most compelling aspect of each film is not, in fact, the subject matter. It's the canny (perhaps uncanny) way Clooney uses his finely honed persona to subvert the characters as well as audience expectation. Come to think of it, it could be the other way around. It's quite possible Clooney is using the characters to subvert his own image.

In director Alexander Payne's The Descendants, Clooney is Matt King, a mostly successful Hawaiian real estate lawyer with two troubled daughters, teenaged Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and a wife in a terminal coma. Matt is also the executor of a massive land trust that about 117 cousins want to sell off to developers and get rich on. While dealing with the land sale, he finds out his wife was having an affair and planning on divorce. In Entertainment Weekly Clooney described the film as, "a coming-of-age film for a 50-year-old man." He's right. Matt is a spineless, non-confrontational loser who rarely says no or speaks up for himself. A road trip to track down the lover (Matthew Lillard, Shaggy in Scooby Doo) morphs into an internal journey of sorts, wherein Matt finally finds a backbone and a semblance of peace in middle age.

At the other end of the spectrum is Governor Mike Morris (Clooney), the suave, erudite, media-ready Democratic Party presidential candidate. The Ides of March, which Clooney also directed, unfolds over a couple of weeks heading into the critical Ohio primary as his campaign managers Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) wheel and deal their way to delegate votes and flattering press coverage. The campaign comes close to imploding when Stephen makes an unsavory discovery about Morris and learns the hard way how to play politics in the big leagues. It's also a coming-of-age story, Stephen's, as the unflappably confident wunderkind grows from starry-eyed idealist to jaded realist.

Depending on how you prefer your Clooney, the schlumpy Matt — complete with cheesy Hawaiian shirts, bad hair and workmanlike gait — may be too much casting against type. The Descendants is Clooney's film, and though initial reactions may be, "George Clooney, cuckolded loser? I don't think so!" he does indeed turn in one of his best performances ever. You can see the weight of regret on his shoulders when he walks; see it in the uncomfortable shuffle in the feet when forced to deal with issues he just wishes would go away. Matt is impotent in more than one sense of the word, and witnessing his admission of that in the wake of his wife's infidelity and looming death is suitably awkward.

That said your enjoyment of the film will rely on your tolerance for Payne's particular brand of American male angst navel gazing (admittedly I have none). Payne inspires the same reaction to Matt that he did with the protagonist of Sideways: a desire to smack them upside the head. The affluent upper middle-class "issues" detract somewhat from Matt's emotional upheaval, but when the big decision is selling a plot of coastal Hawaiian land for $600 or $750 million, it's hard to care about emotions. And because it's Clooney playing Matt, expectations are that he's going to pull it together sooner rather than later. When that doesn't happen, The Descendants gets tired. Fast.

Compared to Payne's meticulously paced, detail-oriented film, Clooney's own work is practically action-packed. The Ides of March is a traditional linear narrative with few surprises (take one guess as to what the indiscretion could be) but works on the strength of a stellar cast that ping-pongs off itself to nearly brilliant effect. A look at the poster hints at a master and student type relationship story that sees the latter eclipse the former. It's not. It's more focused on the disillusionment inherent in politics, no matter how pure the motives for entering public service.

Clooney is a generous director, and it shows in the attention he lavishes on his supporting players. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti (smackable in Payne's Sideways) are beautifully rumpled as campaign trail veterans, Marisa Tomei is perfectly abrasive as a journalist who's under no delusion she has any kind of personal understanding with her subjects, and Jeffrey Wright is smarmily polished as a senator whose delegates are the race's deciding factor. But it's Gosling's film, and his increasing distress is pitch-perfect and it flirts with heartbreaking when he throws in the towel and plays the game by everyone else's rules. As for Clooney, he lingers in the background in a twisted spin on (perceived) persona: Masterful. Egalitarian. Noble. Smug.

The Descendants opens in Hong Kong on January 26; The Ides of March opens February 2.