A Star Is Born
Warner Bros. | Release Date: October 5, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
88
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 60 Critic Reviews
Positive:
58
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
We Got This CoveredLuke ParkerOct 5, 2018
In spite of a momentous directorial debut and performance from Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga leaves the lasting impression in A Star Is Born, a beautiful production perfectly suited to re-release the superstar as a top-tier performer; she is nothing short of astounding. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshOct 4, 2018
Cooper knows he has an audience willing to listen, and what he says is so beautifully, powerfully open-hearted, vulnerable and loving it's overwhelming. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensOct 3, 2018
It’s such a welcome sensation to walk out of a movie feeling properly walloped, reminded of the potential power of the big screen to seduce us, entertain us, and break our hearts. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 3, 2018
One of the many wonderful surprises in A Star is Born is how director/co-writer/leading man Cooper strikes the perfect balance between a showbiz fable with emotional histrionics and performance numbers and a finely honed, intimate story with universal truths and experiences hardly unique to the entertainment world. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternOct 2, 2018
The simplest thing to say about A Star Is Born is that it’s all right. Not all right as in OK with a shrug, but thrillingly, almost miraculously right in all respects. Read full review
100
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 2, 2018
Simultaneously an immersive concert film, enchanting romance and tear-jerking rock fantasy, A Star Is Born is a dynamic multifaceted showcase for Gaga and Cooper, who makes his directing debut a thing of melodic, masterful beauty. Together, they form an electrifying duo in one of the best movies of 2018 and the finest musical since 2002’s “Chicago.” Read full review
100
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaOct 2, 2018
For a movie with such big emotions, it also feels grounded and realistic. Somehow, Cooper has made a Hollywood fairy tale seem utterly believable and magical at the same time. Read full review
100
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 25, 2018
Most thrilling are the stage sequences. Cooper often films Ally’s thousands of screaming fans from her point of view — putting us in her lucky shoes for a minute...It’s that feeling of exhilaration that makes A Star Is Born the best film of the year so far. Read full review
100
Film ThreatAndy HowellSep 12, 2018
The lightning in a bottle you have to catch to make an epic love story work is chemistry between the leads. With one actor a relative novice, and the other trying to stretch himself and direct his first feature, the deck was stacked against them. But wow did they pull it off. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are terrific together. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorSep 8, 2018
It rejoices in a classic structure in which one upward trajectory and one downward meet for a shining moment in the middle. Under Cooper’s direction – and thanks to his chemistry with his co-star – the movie throbs with the excitement of that meeting, while the downfall of his alcoholic rocker achieves an almost tragic catharsis. Read full review
100
EmpireTerri WhiteSep 6, 2018
A remarkably assured directorial debut from Bradley Cooper who turns in a career-defining performance opposite a promising Lady Gaga. A remake that captures the tone and spirit of prior films, A Star Is Born still blazes its own heartfelt, authentic path. Read full review
100
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 31, 2018
Cooper has made a jaggedly tender love story that is never over-the-top, an operatic movie that dares to be quiet. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 31, 2018
The story of A Star Is Born may be as old as show-business, but it is also electrifyingly fresh – a well-known melody given vivid, searching new force. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 31, 2018
For one star to get an award, a handful of defeated nominees have to swallow their pain, as the spotlight moves away from them. For one star to deliver the shock of the new, another one has to receive the shock of the old. A Star Is Born turns that transaction into a love story. Read full review
95
Film Journal InternationalKevin LallySep 10, 2018
The songs, written by Gaga, Cooper, Lukas Nelson, Jason Aldean and Mark Ronson, are all terrific and will make a helluva soundtrack album, and Lady Gaga’s performances are electrifying. Combine that with the genuine-feeling romance between the co-stars and the heartbreak of its dissolution, and you have one soaring and searing piece of movie entertainment. Read full review
95
UproxxMike RyanSep 8, 2018
What Bradley Cooper has done here as an actor and director is truly remarkable. Read full review
93
The VergeBryan BishopOct 3, 2018
Cooper’s A Star is Born is unquestionably a film born out of our current era and modern struggles with addiction. In that way, it serves as a potent reminder that even the most familiar stories can be used to examine the issues and concerns of a given moment. Read full review
92
IGNRafael MotamayorSep 11, 2018
A refreshing take of this classic showbiz rise and fall tale, with updated character work, fantastic performances by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, and a soundtrack that will be stuck in your head for days. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 3, 2018
This latest and fourth version is a gorgeous heartbreaker (bring tissues). Like its finest antecedents, it wrings tears from its romance and thrills from a steadfast belief in old-fashioned, big-feeling cinema. That it’s also a perverse fantasy about men, women, love and sacrifice makes it all the better. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyApril WolfeOct 3, 2018
To fall in love with Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is to embrace its paradoxes and, to quote a song Lady Gaga sings in the film, go “off the deep end” and submerge oneself “far from the shallow.” My advice? Submit. Suspend yourself in the charms and romance of this melodrama. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 2, 2018
You get pulled into a force field, thanks to Cooper’s behind-the-camera chops and Gaga’s sound and fury. By the time the end credits roll, you realize that, in fact, two stars have been born. Read full review
90
The AtlanticDavid SimsOct 2, 2018
Cooper’s biggest innovation in this remake, which he wrote with Eric Roth and Will Fetters, is his emphasis on partnership. He interweaves Jackson and Ally’s relationship with the music they create together, so the audience’s investment in both is palpable. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranOct 2, 2018
The result is a show business rush so pure it would be illegal if it were a drug. Though the film’s peek behind the celebrity-curtain love story inevitably falters a bit in the second half, the emotional waves it has already created manage to carry us over the rough spots. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneOct 1, 2018
The result is pure Saturday-night moviegoing: it gives you one hell of a wallop, then you wake up on Sunday morning without a scratch. (By contrast, the emotional nakedness of the Judy Garland version, poised within formal compositions, can still reduce me to rubble.) Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 14, 2018
Gorgeously shot, lighted and scored, and acted by both leads with an incandescence that feels fully lived in, Cooper’s movie seduces you almost immediately. It doesn’t promise the shock of the new, but from the first frame it casts a spell, the kind that lets you know immediately that you’re in good hands. Read full review
90
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 7, 2018
When it hits its highest, most resonant notes, Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born—starring the director alongside pop icon Lady Gaga—achieves a triumphant, romantic ache that is often just what we want to experience at the movies. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 31, 2018
It’s wonderful to see a first-time filmmaker who’s more interested in effective storytelling than in impressing us; telling a story effectively is hard enough. Best of all, Cooper has succeeded in making a terrific melodrama for the modern age. Read full review
90
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeAug 31, 2018
Cooper and Lady Gaga are dynamite together; this is a story that lives and dies by the central relationship and the instant chemistry that must blossom between them, and these two have it in spades. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 3, 2018
The latest update, directed by Cooper and built on the sturdy bones of William Wellman’s and Robert Carson’s 1937 script, has heart, soul, and sinew. Above all, it has Lady Gaga, both before and after her character’s transformation from an outer-borough duckling into a superstar swan. Read full review
88
The Associated PressLindsey BahrOct 3, 2018
A Star Is Born, is simply terrific — a big-scale cinematic delight that will have the masses singing, swooning and sobbing along with it. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadaySep 21, 2018
A well-seasoned, handsomely cured slab of showbiz schmaltz that hits all the right pleasure centers. With equal parts glitz and grit, Cooper has successfully navigated the most perilous shoals of making a classic narrative his own, managing to create one of its best iterations to date. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 10, 2018
This story has been told several times before—and influenced other similar romances—but Cooper and Gaga find a way to make this feel fresh and new. It’s in their eyes. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 5, 2018
The surprise is that, at least for its first half, this newest A Star Is Born is so powerfully fresh. Read full review
83
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerOct 2, 2018
A Star is Born isn’t a new love story, or even an especially unique one. But it’s a traditional love story told supremely well, and sometimes that’s exactly what audiences go to the movies to see. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattAug 31, 2018
It’s Cooper, in his directing debut, who ultimately has to carry the film from both sides. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica KiangAug 31, 2018
The star that is truly born here is Cooper as a director. Read full review
83
The Film StageLeonardo GoiAug 31, 2018
Credit for A Star is Born‘s heartwarming aura is owed less to Cooper’s own directing (assured and judicious a debut as it may be) than to the freshness and credibility brought by his fellow superstar. Believe the pre-premiere hype: Lady Gaga is nothing short of extraordinary. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeOct 7, 2018
Its Oscar-bait earworm tune may be entitled Shallow, but the film itself is as deep and resonant as Bradley Cooper’s drawl, and as bright as Lady Gaga’s screen future. Read full review
80
VoxAlissa WilkinsonSep 14, 2018
The movie works best, above all, as a melodrama about the limits and possibilities of love, and how love can make us into the best and worst versions of ourselves in the very same moment. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 12, 2018
I have zero doubts about the first half of A Star Is Born — it couldn’t be more charming. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramSep 10, 2018
True, Cooper’s film could do with a tighter edit, especially in the second act, where it has a tendency to drag. But all told, A Star is Born is a big achievement: raw, romantic, tragic, and tumultuous. Read full review
80
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneySep 10, 2018
While A Star Is Born isn’t a perfect movie, faltering in its second act and rushing far too quickly into Ally’s rise to fame, it’s an undeniably mesmerizing one. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 31, 2018
Calling the new A Star Is Born a “valentine” from its star, Lady Gaga, to her fans sounds a bit coy and delicate, so let’s call it what it really is: a hot French kiss (with full-on tongue), filled with passion, tears and a staggering amount of chutzpah. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAug 31, 2018
The first-time director's grasp of pacing could be improved and the overlong movie can't quite sustain the energy and charm of its sensational start. But this is a durable tale of romance, heady fame and crushing tragedy, retold for a new generation with heart and grit. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenOct 3, 2018
Most of all, this rendition of A Star Is Born oozes with romantic chemistry between Cooper and Gaga, as well as the stunning command of rock & roll visual tropes evidenced by Cooper and his director of photography Matthew Libatique (Black Swan). Read full review
76
Paste MagazineTim GriersonOct 3, 2018
For every nice small observation and delicately detailed bit of emotional truth, A Star Is Born is, in a larger sense, trapped by its own construction. Yes, it can be quite moving—but it’s moving precisely how you might imagine it would be. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedOct 5, 2018
It is far from perfect, but the entertainment value is undeniable. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 3, 2018
Cooper directs with a sure hand, never overextending himself, and Lady Gaga proves to be a natural performer (she’s more believable in the role than Barbra Streisand was 42 years ago). She and Cooper exhibit a strong, primal chemistry. The movie works because we believe in them and have a rooting interest in their star-crossed, doomed love affair. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonOct 3, 2018
You see that Cooper has taken the frayed ends of American culture and knitted them together — male and female, urban and rural, folksy and hip, rich and poor, finding common ground through music. You see songs move through different musical idioms, and you see the power that can have, as long as people are willing to listen. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenOct 3, 2018
There’s joy in watching Cooper, for the most part, actually pull this off—including the gamble of casting an acting novice in the crucial title role. Read full review
75
Original-CinKaren GordonOct 3, 2018
Bradley Cooper makes an impressive directing debut with A Star Is Born, turning one of Hollywood’s most remade movies into something fresh and soulful, even though it’s hampered by some of the story’s clichés. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 2, 2018
Cooper is very much a real director, with a genuine facility with filming musical numbers. We believe in the characters’ talents, and spend time soaking them up without a lot of nervous, overcompensating editing. Between songs, he and Gaga make even the bluntest cliches about love and career and misery minty-fresh, all over again. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 2, 2018
There is plenty that’s wrong with it, and there’s plenty that’s right with it. But the truth is, in the moment, no one is balancing pros and cons. I just loved it. It’s a film that combines an overall feeling of modernity and relevance with the glow of old-time glamour. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 2, 2018
What Bradley Cooper’s beguiling A Star Is Born is very, very good at is showing us how a song can transform a person, or a moment, and how that transformation just might make us fall in love with the person singing it, for a moment or for longer. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 12, 2018
Cooper keeps both the camera and his dramatic focus tightly locked on the characters, and on Lady Gaga’s face, expressing the full ecstasy and agony of what this timeless tale throws at her. Like Jackson, he can recognize a natural, brilliant talent when he sees one. And he knows, too, when to get out of the way and cede the spotlight. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineKeith UhlichSep 8, 2018
Bradley Cooper understands that a message is only as resonant as its messenger, so he surrounds himself with collaborators, old and new, who can sell even the hoariest cliché. Read full review
75
IndieWireMichael NordineAug 31, 2018
Credit to Cooper for delivering his best, most soulful performance while pulling double duty behind the camera, but it’s his co-star whose magnetism most draws you into their world — and keeps you there even when the film hits the occasional wrong note. Read full review
70
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyAug 31, 2018
Taken on its own terms as an unashamedly anachronistic attempt to muster the emotional intensity of the Hollywood melodrama tradition, Cooper’s film must be at least grudgingly acknowledged as a success. Read full review
60
CineVueJohn BleasdaleAug 31, 2018
Bradley Cooper’s soulful exploration of the depredations of fame is an effective melodrama boasting genuine star turns from himself and Lady Gaga. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 27, 2018
Musically sharp and dramatically flat, the latest version of A Star is Born starts impressively and falls off sharply, a sudsy, overwrought remake that drowns in its abrupt, perfunctory emotional leaps. Read full review
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