A Star is Born

This is my first review in almost two months! In case you missed them I made two posts about some of my favorite movies: Part One and Part Two!

A Star is Born is the latest take on a classic story that has been told a few times through film. This one is directed by and stars Bradley Cooper alongside Lady Gaga. The story follows Gaga's character Ally, as an aspiring singer who meets a famous musician named Jackson Maine played by Cooper at one of her bar performances. He is so impressed with her he invites her to his next show and convinces her to play a song she wrote at the live show. This kickstarts Ally's career as a singer and a new relationship between Ally and Jackson. As Ally's career takes off and she makes her way to becoming a huge solo star, Jackson's personal problems become bigger and bigger. The movie focuses on their relationship as a romantic couple and as musicians.

Watching the trailer to this movie, I was interested in the movie right away. Going into this though, I thought I would be getting a feel-good story about a singer who finally gets her big break and becomes a star. While that is a part of it, this movie was way more impactful on an emotional level than I ever thought it could be. There are moments where you'll laugh, but there are even more moments where you will be shocked and hit with strong emotional scenes that are very effective. This movie surprised me because I wasn't expecting it to be what it was, and that's a good thing. Of course, I don't have any knowledge of any of the previous films, so maybe it's similar to those in its arc.

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper work extremely well together, and they needed to for this movie to hit those big moments right. The movie doesn't work if they have no chemistry and thankfully they have a lot of it. Lady Gaga was a great choice and she does every part of her character well, it also doesn't hurt that she actually has an amazing voice. She does a great job at really bringing you into her story with her acting and she nails the big emotional scenes. Bradley Cooper also brings his best in this movie, doing a good job at showing the emotional scenes too and being believable as a big name musician. The best scenes are when they are together though, whether that be a big musical number or just a conversation between them.  They do a good job at capturing the feeling of a big live concert with the live crowds cheering, I believe this was done by actually playing at live events to crowds (mostly fans of Gaga I assume). Bradley Cooper's voice as a singer was very good, there's a great musical moment early on between Cooper and Gaga that was the moment that really brought me into the movie. Cooper's directing was great and the movie looks and sounds great because of it and the rest of the crew. All the shocking and strong emotional moments felt earned and not forced or out of place, because the movie does a great job at setting those moments up.

A Star is Born brings you into the life of two musicians who live two completely different lives that are merged together. I was completely invested in both of the main characters and also enjoyed the side characters played by the likes of Sam Elliot, Dave Chappelle, and Andrew Dice Clay (OOH!). It was a movie with surprising moments and some hard to watch scenes (purposely made that way). At the end of it all, I found another movie that I will probably grow to love more after more watches. This movie left an impact and that's thanks to the great work everyone did making this. It was very clear that Cooper was passionate about this project and it shows in every scene. 

Overall Grade: A

I should be back before the end of the weekend with a Venom movie review.