The Reviews Are In. The Verdict On A Star Is Born

And into Oscar territory, we go. With The Favourite, Roma and First Man all having screened at Venice, we’ll hear from Sasha at Telluride which is kicking off with its patron brunch as we type.

The highly-anticipated A Star Is Born was born into Venice today, finally screening and the verdict is…

“Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga are stunning together in Cooper’s rapturous rock ‘n’ roll remake of a romantic saga that never gets old.” Says Owen Gleiberman of Variety. ““A Star Is Born” is that thing we always yearn for but so rarely get to see: a transcendent Hollywood movie. It’s the fourth remake of a story that dates back to 1932, but this one has a look and vibe all its own — rapturous and swooning, but also delicate and intimate and luminous. It’s set in the present day, but in spirit it’s a sophisticated retro ’70s drama built around the uncanny flow of feeling that develops between the movie’s two stars: Bradley Cooper, who plays Jackson Maine, a hard-drinking, bad-ol’-boy redneck rock ‘n’ roller who is still hanging on as a popular attraction but has lost the lust for what he’s doing, and Lady Gaga, in her fetching and accomplished movie-star debut, as Ally, an ingenuous, fresh-faced singer-songwriter who becomes his lover and stage partner before rocketing on her own into the new pop stratosphere.” We get to meet a different side of Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born, “Lady Gaga, actress. A character we haven’t seen before.”
Where does this stand in the incarnations of A Star Is Born for Gleiberman? “The best version of “A Star Is Born” has always been the 1954 George Cukor version: moody, purplish, extravagant, driven by Judy Garland’s self-dramatizing fever. The scene you remember best from it, apart from Garland singing “The Man That Got Away,” is James Mason’s demented drunken slap of Garland during the Academy Awards — one of the most outrageous moments in movie history. In the new “Star Is Born,” Bradley Cooper pays homage to that moment, in a scene set at the Grammys, and actually tops it in outrageousness, in sick-joke masochistic power. And he does it convincingly. That’s part of the magnetic pull of this version — it, too, is a romance heightened by the seductive cruel mirror of showbiz. Yet it has a naked humanity that leaves you wowed. These two people, the rising star and the fading star, are locked in a love as true as it is torn, and both of them, by the end, become us. “A Star Is Born” is more than a throwback — it’s a reminder of the scrappy grand passion that movies are all about.”

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian says, “Gaga is the one who commands your attention: that sharp, quizzical, leonine, mesmeric face – an uningratiating face, very different from the wide-eyed openness of Streisand or Garland. (Weirdly, she rather more resembles Marta Heflin, playing the groupie-slash-interviewer who went to bed with Kristofferson in ’76.) Her songs are gorgeous and the ingenuous openness of her scenes with Jackson are wonderfully sympathetic. Meanwhile Cooper, whose screen persona can so often be bland and unchallenging, makes precisely this conservative tendency work for him in the role. He is so sad you want to hug him. Arguably, this film fudges some of Jackson’s dark side, by giving him partial deafness as well as alcoholism, but it is still a richly sympathetic spectacle.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt agrees, “Gaga’s serious-actress transformation for her first major film role will undoubtedly lead the conversation, and she deserves praise for her restrained, human-scale performance as a singer whose real-girl vulnerability feels miles away from the glittery meat-dress delirium of her own stage persona.”

Filled with original songs that will no doubt enter the Best Original Song conversation, Greenblatt says, “And the original songs (most of which Gaga and Cooper share full or partial credit for) are memorably, sturdily melodic —though not the conspicuously flat dance-pop Ally moves toward as her career swerves closer toward the mainstream.”

Over at Indiewire, Michael Nordine says, “To hear Bradley Cooper’s crooner in “A Star Is Born” tell it, music is the same story being told over and over again — just 12 notes between each octave, all of them eventually repeating. The magic lies in how they’re expressed. That’s a fitting note to hit in the fourth iteration of a story that’s proven more enduring than most songs written when the first “Star” was born 81 years ago, and it’s key to appreciating Cooper’s arrangement as more than just a cover.” Nordine continues, “At times this is the most immersive concert film this side of the late, great Jonathan Demme, the camera just feet from Jackson as he downs a handful of pills with a swig of vodka before picking up his guitar and launching into his set.” He concludes, “Covering a whirlwind 24 hours during which the two lovers meet, fall in love, and perform onstage together for the first time, they make for a soaring, borderline transcendent first act that will stay stuck in your head after the credits roll.”

The Hollywood Reporter talks about Sam Elliot’s performance as Bobby who brings “his customary weathered integrity.” David Rooney talks about cinematography and production design, and the music, “Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who brings such a rich look to his work with Darren Aronofsky, shoots in high-gloss or darker textures as required, excelling in particular in the dynamic performance sequences. Production designer Karen Murphy and costumer Erin Benach make vital contributions to defining milieu and character. But the most invaluable element is the music, covering a diverse range of frequently catchy songs, co-written by Cooper and Gaga with artists including Lukas Nelson, Jason Isbell and Mark Ronson. (Nelson and his group Promise of the Real appear as Jack’s band.) Cooper does his own singing with the same unshowy confidence he brings to everything else.”