Monday, June 22, 2026

Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein Movie “Maestro” Wins Raves in Venice, Some Declare Better than Director’s “A Star is Born”

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The reviews are coming in for Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic and they are raves.

“Maestro” is being applauded by all the major review outlets from what I call PenskeWorld –Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Deadline.com. Vanity Fair and the UK reviews are all glowing.

“Maestro” is Netflix’s big Oscar movie for this fall. They’ll debut it on October 2nd at David Geffen Hall in New York, formerly Avery Fisher Hall, where the Philharmonic plays. The Hall will be turned into a state of the art screening room. At least two parties — one for the paying public and one for the Lincoln Center donors — are planned.

The big question is, if the strikes aren’t over, will anyone other than Cooper attend?

Some reviews are so enthusiastic they say that for actor Cooper his second directing venture is even better than Cooper’s much awarded hit, “A Star is Born.” David Rooney writes in THR: “It’s intended as no slight to Cooper’s A Star is Born remake, his impressive first turn in the director’s chair, to say his follow-up is a considerable leap in terms of accomplishment.”

And, yes, the prosthetic nose is not a problem says Variety’s Owen Glieberman. Let’s move on. Sounds like we have another Best Picture nominee after Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, AIR, maybe Barbie.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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