"A Star is Born" (the new one) is written by, directed by, and stars Bradley Cooper. Cooper plays a handsome (he's good at that part) country rock star who "discovers" Lady Gaga vamping up "La Vie en Rose" in a drag night club. He spots her talent and nurtures both it and their budding romance. Unfortunately, he is also an alcoholic and drug addict, and as her career skyrockets, his plummets. IN one scene, he desires Gaga to find her own authentic voice,and sing the songs she has written herself. "You must tell YOUR story," he pontificates.
This seems strange,considering that in Cooper's first attempt at directing and screenwriting, he is trotting out a movie that has been made at least four times previously. The first two were non-musicals back in the '30s -- and then none less than Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand took on the Gaga role. Lady Gaga is an excellent actress -- unsurprising, since all of her pop songs involve her performing a "role". However, none of the songs are memorable; Cooper's pop star is typically untalented; and the movie is (like it's predecessors) a downer. Gaga's "La Vie en Rose" reminds the viewer of the difference between real talent (thank you Edith Piaf) and over-the-top vamping at a drag club. In addition, I missed the Harold Arlen / Ira Gershwin songs of the Garland version, including "The Man that Got Away".
ON the positive side, Lady Gaga is believable as a pop star -- and she looks so ordinary in blue jeans that her transformation to pop star is very well done. Bradley Cooper lacks the edginess of James Mason in the Garland version -- his addictions are portrayed as a sort of victimhood from an unhappy childhood, as if his alcoholism resembled lung cancer developed from his parents' second hand smoke. The first hour of the film is good -- as Gaga's star ascends. The descent, not so much.
I also saw "The Green Book" last night. It stars Vigo Mortensen and and Mahershala Ali, and recounts the story of a pianist who hires an Italian goodfella to drive him on a concert tour through the South (it's 1962). Predictably, they end up liking each other, and Mortenson ends up being horrified by segregation. The movie cheats, a bit. Just as Sidney Portier was an M.D. in "The Man who Came to Dinner", Ali's character is a world-class pianist, a PhD., talks without the hint of any African-American accent, and, to boot, is gay. So much for white fear about black men molesting (or attracting) their women!
Nonetheless, the movie is good fun. Such films live or die by the charisma of the two stars, and Mortensen and Ali pull off their somewhat hackneyed roles very well.