A Star Is Born Takes Advantage of Established Stars in Cast

A Star Is Born (2018)

A Star Is Born was fantastic. It was a heart-wrenching roller coaster of emotions, with delightful highs and bottomless lows. Of every movie I have seen this year, A Star Is Born performs the best analysis of the human condition. It is a love letter to the broken part in every one of us. The only people who will not connect to any of this movie are the most freakishly well-adjusted and secure people. A Star Is Born takes a spotlight and shines it on human relationships and amplifies it by making the main characters global superstars. Of course it takes liberties and is a hyperbolic representation of certain behaviors, but it is so beautifully done and brings up so many relatable emotions that it gets away with it. The acting was superb, so much so that at this point in my movie-watching year, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga deserve their own respective Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively. Lady Gaga shines like she hasn’t in years. Every song she sings, besides the song that was written to betray her character’s voice, gave me chills. Even when she was just a cappella in a parking lot, belting her heart out, she was incredible. I was really down on her recent work, besides “Million Reasons”, but now I might give it another listen. Overall, the entire soundtrack was great, with a broad range of songs from dour ballads to bubbly pop songs. Bradley Cooper was his usual excellent self, with an added bonus of a beautiful voice. I don’t know if he was really playing the guitar or piano (I especially doubt the piano), but if he does, he is a true total package. His directing was excellent, and even though A Star Is Born was pushing two and half hours, I didn’t feel the need to check my watch at all. He should at least get a nomination for Best Director, and Matthew Libatique should get a nod for Best Cinematography (yes, I did have to look up his name). Libatique and Cooper did a great job of shooting enormous concert scenes to make them feel personal and relatable, even though I’ve never performed in front of a crowd of thousands. Libatique used lens flares with the expertise of J.J. Abrams, having them add to the visionary aspect of a scene, as opposed to Michael Bay, who uses them to distract from overused CGI. I don’t want to spoil anything major from the plot, but I thoroughly enjoyed that the drama was not created by infidelity in the relationship, like every other movie about celebrities. It was nice to see that people can have problems without cheating on each other. Overall, I loved this movie. A Star Is Born gets 245 million of the roughly 250 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.