How did she not win an Oscar?

Rating: 7/10 (11 March 2019)

There were times during this movie that I felt it was just one of the best I'd seen in a while...and then Bradley Cooper would appear in a scene, or open his mouth, or do anything. This brought the movie's quality down a little for me. He tries very hard to look and sound like a combination of Sam Elliott (he even modeled his character's voice after Elliott's) and Jeff Bridges' character from Crazy Heart, but he doesn't have the gravitas to pull it off. And although it was exhilarating to see Lady Gaga's Ally transform from unsure songstress to confident siren, Cooper's Jackson never really had the same kind of journey. The movie is supposedly about the crossing of paths, with one on the rise and one on the decline, but here Jackson is in decline and a bad egg from pretty much the get-go, and he never really wavers from that. He's the same throughout. I haven't seen the other versions, so perhaps this is how it should go, but it just felt to me that Cooper couldn't bring the right amount of pathos for his character. His chemistry with Gaga was terrific, but I think a lot of that had to do with her passion for the role. Cooper just felt kind of there.