Maestro Movie Review Rating:
Star Cast: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer & ensemble.
Director: Bradley Cooper.
What’s Good: Bradley Cooper, as the titular character, gives the best performance of his career so far. He breaks his real image entirely to create one that is far from his authentic self.
What’s Bad: the emotional punch which is lacking in some parts of the film and ends up diluting the impact in some of the most crucial scenes.
Loo Break: there are predictable bits. If you can make it quick, you have a chance.
Watch or Not?: it is an actor giving the best performance of his life so far. Which means you have to watch him do the magic.
Language: English.
Available On: MAMI Film Festival 2023.
Runtime: 129 Minutes.
User Rating:
The biopic scales the life of legendary musician Leonard Bernstein and his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. It explores the beginning of their relationship, the blooming, of family life, and the tragedy that hit them like a bus.
Maestro Movie Review: Script Analysis
Hollywood has been consistently making some very wrong choices when it comes to biopics. Blonde that, released on Netflix, was more exploitative towards its subject than curious. Months later, the platform is all set to release yet another biography, but this time a biographical love story of the musical legend and conductor Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. Helmed by Bradley Cooper, are we finally up for a movie much more than surface-level exploration? Pretty much yes.
Written by Bradley with co-screenwriter Josh Singer, Maestro doesn’t end up being a stereotypical closeted gay man in love with a straight woman story. Instead, it tries to navigate and find what exactly happened between the two who spent 27 years in this marriage that literally went through every hurdle it possibly could. Maestro is Cooper’s attempt to make his audience travel through history. His idea of having a 4:3 screen ratio to a movie partially shot in monochrome is genius. Because when he merges his blooming love life with a skyrocketing career and forms a musical put of it, you see how confident as a writer he is to let his movie enter a musical zone.
Through Leonard, he manages to explore the old Hollywood. He was the man who gave music to some of the most iconic movies and plays, The West Side Story included. But his personal life also had his s*xuality that was inclined towards men. And it has to be discreet because the old Hollywood was not as open as it is today. Where Maestro falls short is when it transitions from monochrome to color, and the shift is a big one because the entire perspective is changing. The emotional depth, for a very brief period, goes for a toss, until the enormous tragedy hits.
Maestro wins when it finally decides to be a story about a couple who are mending their distance regardless of their star status. It is not the attention that they are bothered about but an uncalled for guest.
Maestro Movie Review: Star Performance
Bradley Cooper goes the ‘add prosthetics, let it be a little caricature, and a very method acting’ way and gives a performance that fits the pallet of the Oscar nomination committee. His performance is so good that, at points, I couldn’t see the Cooper I have grown up watching. Here is a man with his sea blue eyes looking the sharpest even in monochrome, but he knows what he is supposed to and not just rely on his looks.
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein is such a balanced performance. The actor is such a player when it comes to performing an intense argument. She manages to grab the attention of a room full of people with just a little.
Maya Hawke and the rest of the cast do a great job at elevating the movie.
Maestro Movie Review Rating:
Star Cast: Tamannaah Bhatia, Jisshu Sengupta, Nithiin, Nabha Natesh
Director: Merlapaka Gandhi
What’s Good: Nithiin and Tamannaah trying their level best to fit into the roles that have already been aced by two of the most prolific actors India has.
What’s Bad: the ghost of Andhadhun that haunts the movie at every single moment and movement. Even the cat is affected you see!
Loo Break: first decide if you want to get into it or not.
Watch Or Not: totally up to you. There are no two ways that it copies Andhadhun scene to scene (with some changes) but not major ones really.
Language: Telugu
Available on: Disney+ Hotstar.
Runtime: 135 Minutes
User Rating:
Arun (Nithiin), a budding musician fakes blindness calling it his experiment to find a tune that he feels is missing. Soon his music introduces him to Sophie (Nabha) and she introduces him to the Goa elite. In no time he witnesses two murders and gets involved in a cat and mice chase.
Maestro Movie Review: Script Analysis
Andhadhun, which hit theatres back in 2019 starring Tabu, Ayushmann Khurrana, Radhika Apte and created by Sriram Raghavan, wasn’t just any other film. It was a homage, to the yesteryear, to Sriram’s inspirations, to his audience and their thinking capabilities. To Tabu and her iconic characters, you guys! It was a film that needed to be dissected layer by layer and you would still have something left to discover.
2 years later, a team of writers (crediting the originals too) tried to adapt the same story into a different language. Pune becomes Goa, Ayushmann becomes Nithiin, Tabu is replaced by Tamannaah and Nabha plays Radhika’s part. But can there be a replacement to Sriram and his thrilling brain that originally created this satisfyingly convoluted mess of a story? Of course not.
Maestro an adaptation of 2019 hit thriller wastes no time and becomes a Telugu remake. Of course writer Sheik Dawood G. Tries to leave his mark on the story by adding some new bits to the already written screenplay. But Andhadhun in itself is such a complete meal that one won’t even feel like changing anything about it. Sheik seems to be suffering from the same thought. He does change and adds a few things to the mix but almost all of them are inconsequential to the main plot.
The main plot in itself shifts the base from Pune to Goa. The way Sophie and Arun meet is different now and does not really work in the favour of the movie-watching experience. In the original Sophie is the one who introduces Aakash to the Pune elite, but here she only ends up being an extended cameo.
Such is the thing with many other plot points that become shallow. Because they were made with keeping certain landscape in mind. You can expect Pune and its permanent residents to be diverse. But Goa? No one speaks Konkani, not even the local police officer? Not a single cultural/local reference? When we talk about inclusion and call out Hindi cinema, the same goes for every other industry in the country, and world at large.
Credit where it’s due, the scene where Simran cooks and acts all myopic by explaining how to cook a crab without making it suffer is a treat with Tamannaah too. Again it is written so well originally that it is bound to give you goosebumps.
Maestro Movie Review: Star Performance
It is a tough job. Even if you don’t think about the existence of the original, the characters in themselves are a huge challenge. The fact that Ayushmann, Tabu and Radhika blew life first and with all their superpowers makes it like walking on a double edged sword for the new actors.
Nithiin as Arun tries hard to not fall into the trap of playing a Blind man on screen. While when completely blind, he is of course amazing, but the real trouble is when he is acting blind. Ayushmann Khurrana in his version was such a treat as he changed multiple expressions in the same frame. Nithiin falls level short in that department.
Tamannaah Bhatia has the toughest job to do here. Fitting in Tabu’s shoes is no joke, and she understands that. The actor tried to replicate the magic but then can there be another Tabu? No. Tamannaah shines when she has to be cunning in her own way, but the character belongs to the OG Simmi.
Nabha Natesh who already has a smaller part is reduced to a cameo and nothing more. I wish she has more to her than this. Same is with Jisshu Sengupta who does a wonderful job, but doesn’t get much.
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