Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Maestro (dir by Bradley Cooper)

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I hope that Bradley Cooper will win an Oscar soon.

It’s obvious that Cooper wants that Oscar and really, who can blame him? After spending years being dismissed as a lightweight comedy actor, Cooper has really come into his own over the past thirteen years. 2012 was the year that he starred in Silver Linings Playbook and received his first Best Actor nomination. In the years that followed, he was nominated for American Sniper, American Hustle, A Star Is Born and Maestro. He deserved to be nominated for both Nightmare Alley and Licorice Pizza. Cooper has shown himself to be both a talented actor and director. He may not have been nominated for his direction of A Star Is Born but everyone knows that he should have been. He’s come a long way from being the star of The Hangover films and it makes sense that he would want an Oscar to make it official.

(The Oscar itself may not carry the cultural cachet that it once did but seriously, an award is an award.)

That desire for an Oscar is probably the best way to explain 2023’s Maestro, a film that really might as well have just been called Oscar Bait. Not only did Cooper direct and co-write Maestro but he also donned a prosthetic nose (and was briefly the center of some online controversy) to play the role of composer Leonard Bernstein. Filmed in both black-and-white and color, the film follows Leonard Bernstein from his young debut as a conductor through his marriage to Felecia (Carey Mulligan). Throughout the film, Felecia remains Leonard’s strongest supporter and his muse, even when she’s embarrassed by the rumors of his own impulsive behavior and his habit of cheating on her with men. The film is a portrait of the struggle to be a genius, the struggle to support a genius, and the love that can hold two people together even during the most difficult of times. And it’s all very Oscar bait-y, giving both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan several scenes that, while well-executed, still feel as if they were designed specifically to appeal to the voters.

I had mixed feelings about Maestro when I watched it. On the one hand, I definitely admired the craft and the skill that went into the production. I admired the performances of both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan. The movie’s soundtrack is full of the best of Bernstein’s compositions, all performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. The movie looked wonderful and it sounded wonderful but it also felt strangely hollow. Watching it, I realized that the movie really didn’t know what it wanted to say about Bernstein and Felecia. The movie was so consumed with technical perfection that the emotions of the story sometimes felt rather remote. It was a film about Leonard Bernstein that, despite Cooper’s strong performance, failed to really give us a reason to care about Bernstein. Maestro is a film that you admire while you watch it but it doesn’t really stick with you afterwards. It’s the epitome of Oscar bait.

Maestro did not win Cooper any Oscars, though it did bring some nominations. The film was also nominated for Best Picture but it lost to Oppenheimer. That said, I’m looking forward to the year when Bradley Cooper does finally win his Oscar and hopefully, he’ll win it for a film that’s more like the emotion-filled A Star Is Born than the rather detached Maestro. He’s one of my favorite actors and he’s due.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.16 “Zargtha”

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, it’s werewolf time!

Episode 2.16 “Zargtha”

(Dir by Rick Jacobson, originally aired on April 5th, 1997)

The discovery of a murdered teenage runaway on the beach leads to Mitch investigating a series of killings involving homeless teens. The police think that the murders must be the result of a wild animal, a wolf of some sort. Daimont Teague shows up to tell Mitch that he thinks the killer is a Zargtha, a type of Eastern European werewolf that has found its way to California.

Mitch declares that he’s seen a lot of things over the past few months but there’s no way that he’s going to buy into the idea of a werewolf from Eastern Europe.

Okay, let’s consider this. Over the past few months, Mitch has

encountered numerous sea monsters,
been sucked into the past and hunted by an axe-wielding frontierman
gone to the future and been hunted by cannibal mutants
watched multiple animals explode after getting exposed to space dust
watched two 900 year-old Vikings come back to life and pick up their blood feud right where they left off,
discovered that the world is secretly controlled by the Knights Templar and,
fought an actual vampire!

That’s just some of what Mitch has seen since the start of the second season of Baywatch Nights. And yet, after all that, a werewolf is just too out there!? I know that Mitch is supposed to be a skeptic and I respect that. I’m a skeptic myself. But there’s a point where skepticism becomes stupidity. I may not believe in vampires but that’s going to quickly change if I ever meet one.

After learning that there’s a group of homeless teenagers living in abandoned building, Mitch and the head of the local shelter, Cindy (Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff), try to find and warn them before the killer reaches them. Complicating this matter is that a recent earthquake is threatening to make the building come crashing down and also, the killer is already in the building. And yes, the killer is a werewolf from Eastern Europe.

This was actually a pretty good episode. Though the werewolf makeup wasn’t that great, the creature’s ferocious growls and the relentless way that it would attack still made it far more effective than the usual Baywatch Nights monster. As well, the abandoned building turned out to be a wonderfully atmospheric and creepy location. For once, all the Dutch angles felt appropriate. This episode played out like a nightmare and I imagine, back in 1997, it was probably quite scary to watch with the lights out and maybe a storm raging outside.

Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff was married to David Hasselhoff when this episode was filmed. That may explain why Ryan is barely in this episode and, for the first time in a long time, there’s no scenes of Ryan and Mitch flirting. Instead, Mitch spends this episode protecting Cindy and the kids. That’s kind of sweet. Good for the Hoff!

Guilty Pleasure No.66: Cloverfield (dir Matt Reeves)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s just be honest, here. In many ways, 2008’s Cloverfield is a remarkably stupid film.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining film. It’s a fun film. It’s a film that I’ve seen a few times and I usually enjoy it whenever I see it. But it’s still a film about someone who refuses to stop filming, even in the middle of an alien invasion. It makes sense, of course, that Hud Platt (T.J. Miller) would want to film the going away party that’s being held for his friend Rob (Michael Stahl-David). But why would Hud keep holding onto that camcorder even after the aliens invade and New York starts to explode all around him? There are several moments in the film where it’s obvious that the camera is slowing Hud and his friends down. The easiest thing to do would be to drop the camcorder and run to safety. I mean, it’s not like the destruction of New York by aliens is going to be lost to history if Hud doesn’t film it. But instead, Hud not only keeps filming but, for all the shaky cam effects and the heaving breathing of people running for their lives, Hud still somehow manages to capture every important event on camera.

In many ways, the film epitomizes everything that tends to drive people crazy about the found footage genre but Cloverfield is an undeniably fun movie. I mean, there’s a scene where the head of the Statue of Liberty is literally tossed into the middle of the street. It’s such an over-the-top moment that it’s impossible not to love it and, to be honest, the fact that Hud manages to hold the camera still enough to perfectly capture the image of Lady Liberty’s head crashing to the ground is kind of cool. The film follows a group of friends as they try to make their way across New York City to try to rescue Rob’s girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman) before then evacuating the city and there’s something rather exciting about the sight of this small group of people continually moving in the opposite direction of the crowd around them. While everyone else runs away from danger, our heroes move straight into it, even though none of them are exactly action heroes. They’re nerdy hipsters on a mission and, even though you know from the start that they’re all doomed, it’s hard not to kind of love them. The film’s final moments carry more an emotional punch than you might normally expect from a found footage alien invasion film.

That said, if the aliens do come and they are literally tearing apart the Statue of Liberty before your very eyes, there’s no shame in putting down the camera and running. In fact, if there’s any lesson to be learned from Cloverfield, it’s that sometimes, it’s best just to run for it.