Fifty minutes into Bradley Cooper's MAESTRO, his directorial and starring-role biopic of composer Leonard Bernstein, he's discussing a possible book written about all his accomplishments, from teaching children on television to his best remembered work, West Side Story...
And yet we never got to witness any of it, instead listening to he and classy wife Felicia Montealegre (a put-upon Carey Mulligan) within an intellectually-rambling romance from picnics to parties (in-between sporadic bisexual trysts) and not much else about the man that Cooper seems to have more fun portraying as a flamboyant and sophisticated, British-mannered, chain-smoking proto-beatnik than celebrating the legendary musical genius built right into the title... And aesthetically Cooper's cinematic influences... from LENNY to RAGING BULL to CAPOTE... are on full avant-garde display but with nothing behind it, really, except mere window dressing... with tinted glass. Grade: D
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Featured Post
NICKELODEON (1976)
There's a scene in Peter Bogdanovich's tribute to early film-making when Ryan O'Neal, a goofy lawyer turned goofy director, has...
-
The extremely low-budget of THE DEATH COLLECTOR should not be a detriment since it effectively provides an eerie realism to what's a po...
-
If a novelization flows, it doesn't matter how many times you've seen the movie, since, on the printed page, RAIDERS OF THE LOST A...
-
Hands down the best scene of EASY MONEY has Rodney Dangerfield insulting a fat kid and his family... where he seems like characters from sup...
-
Starts out decently enough, and surprisingly different for Mel Brooks to direct a remake: something that isn't a parody of a serious ...
-
Although on the big screen the film noir/crime b-movies were on their way out (or morphing into something else), television held onto this ...
-
It's not just that son of Jim Henson Brian Henson crapped on his father's MUPPET SHOW legacy by making a crude comedy where crude pu...
-
Well if anything happens, and THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON doesn't become a big hit, then they could easily make a prequel taking place...
-
While SHADOWS AND FOG is a pretty good movie, and uses the titular elements that channel old British mystery novels, German Expressionism an...
-
Poor Ryan O'Neal couldn't catch a break. Even two films now considered classics didn't make money in the 1970's upon relea...
-
LIVE CREAM is the best live Cream album, covering songs from the first LP Fresh Cream and Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker (bass/l...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.