The life and times of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein is the crux of Bradley Cooper's "Maestro," a vanity statement that didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
There’s been a lot of hate directed at Cooper these last few weeks. Especially on film Twitter, where his incessant and desperate attempts at campaigning for Oscar have been ridiculed. Nobody should be blamed for “wanting to win.”
Earlier in the year, Cooper already had to deal with the “Jewface” controversy that suddenly appeared after the “Maestro” trailer was released online. That seems to have passed with no real repercussions. It turns out, that would be the least of Cooper’s problems.
The actor-turned-director is now being swamped with backlash for admitting that he had a “no chairs” policy on the set of “Maestro.”
“There’s no chairs on sets; I’ve always hated chairs and I feel like your energy dips the minute you sit down in a chair,” Cooper shared. “So apple boxes are a nice way to sit.”
This sparked an extremely negative reaction online, with numerous people finding his view “ableist”. “The fact that he’s proud of this is sad,” one person tweeted. Another wrote, “As a wheelchair-bound actor, I feel like Bradley Cooper wouldn't let me on set...”
My favorite tweet reply comes from @BRCarr: “Bro you were in hangover relax.”
Casting all of this clownery aside, the real issue I had with “Maestro” was that it felt like a film about Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein. The strenuousness of the whole thing turned me off. Of course, the film has its fans, but I don’t believe we’ll be talking about this film a few years from now. It’s not that memorable, even if it desperately wants to be so.
So, what is “Maestro” exactly? It turns out to mostly be a formal exercise, an airless art film. There are a few well-executed moments, especially a six-minute tracing shot of Bernstein conducting a symphony and an “On the Town” sequence that blurs reality and fiction. That’s about it, but where’s the thematic grounding and narrative drive?
Has anybody here seen “Maestro”? It’s now available to stream on Netflix. The discourse is that the Best Actor race is now between Cooper and Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer).
Before practically going bankrupt, Row K had planned to release "Cliffhanger" in August 2026 on more than 3000 screens nationwide — hopefully with Vertical it hits as many theaters.