Drawing from a well-worn yarn about the price of fame and the anguish of losing it, it is via an unexpected intimacy that Cooper is able to craft something refreshing and unique. Like an acoustic cover of a brassy old standard, he strips away the glitz and bombast to make a passion play that feels raw and unplugged. Garbling his way through a slurring Western drawl, his protagonist Jackson Maine already seems to have one foot in the darkness off-stage right when he accidentally stumbles into a bar after midnight. Despite being technically a drag queen event on this given night, Gaga’s Ally remains the local diva of the haunt due to her undeniable talent—talent that even while in a drunken stupor Jackson takes an immediate shine toward. It could be easy to dismiss Cooper’s aging rocker “discovering” Lady Gaga when, in fact, Gaga has very obviously made it in the music industry for almost a decade now. Yet the film offers an honest commentary about the price of fame today, and the concessions the likes of Gaga or her character Ally must make. The real Gaga, Stefani Germanotta, struggled for years as a singer-songwriter until she embraced the pop star aesthetic in the extreme, so much so that many often forget the talent beneath all the performance art. A Star is Born removes the artifice to re-introduce the frequently overlooked skills of Germanotta, who also co-wrote most of the original songs in the movie, before building her back up into another pop star version of Gaga. It is that trajectory which makes this arguably the most creative remake of A Star is Born, for unlike the other versions, this is less a reconfiguration of the Svengali archetype as it is a man on the verge of breaking—he’s even a rock star going deaf—simply letting a young woman make herself. Ally breaks into the music industry without the pop aesthetic and without Jackson doing more than giving her a microphone, which makes their subsequent marriage and its bittersweet trajectory more emotionally poignant rather than manipulative or saccharine. The film is again a major coup for Gaga. Having already appeared in front of the camera to lesser effect on multiple seasons of American Horror Story, she has never seemed more natural or at ease as an actor than in A Star is Born. Intentionally recreating her heroine as the opposite of the ingénue archetype, Gaga does well with the material and crackles against Cooper, even as the film wisely uses careful scripting and editing to play to Gaga’s acting strengths. Appearing to have a set range, Gaga seems less comfortable with moments of extreme duress, yet can dominate the entire frame when a mic is in her hand or when warily exposing Ally’s (and maybe even her own) vulnerabilities to Jackson. In truth, A Star is Born is a multi-pronged star vehicle. It offers a showcase for Gaga’s many talents, as well as a marker for Cooper’s arrival as a major directorial one. With confidence and an adept eye for gliding cameras and Steadicam shots, Cooper displays a swagger every bit as broad as his own onscreen cowpoke, whose ever-darkening gloom is the real centerpiece performance of the movie. One that will likely be in constant discussion all the way until Oscar’s telecast. A Star is Born premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and opens nationwide on Oct. 5. further reading: The Must See Movies of 2018 David Crow is the Film Section Editor at Den of Geek. He’s also a member of the Online Film Critics Society. Read more of his work here. You can follow him on Twitter @DCrowsNest.