A new trailer for writer-director George Clooney's The Monuments Men is now available.  In addition to fascist ideologies, unfettered immoral scientific experimentation and wanton genocide, Clooney reminds us that the Nazis were out to erase any artistic or cultural evidence of the peoples they conquered.  That simply cannot stand.  While Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds take the fight directly to Hitler himself, Clooney's Monuments Men, a collection of specialists not unlike those in Ocean's Eleven, head for the front lines in order to prevent the Nazis from getting their grimy hands on precious works of art.  Compelling stuff, which is why the film made its way to our Most Anticipated list.

Hit the jump to watch the new trailer.  The film also stars Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, and Hugh Bonneville.  The Monuments Men opens on December 18th.

Check out the new trailer for The Monuments Men below:

Here’s the official synopsis for The Monuments Men:

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action-thriller focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners.  It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed?  But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.