It was the most watchable Oscars in years where Brits and Godzilla triumphed – but Louis Vuitton zippers and a certain ex-president didn’t

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Academy organisers promised a short and snappy ceremony – and the rest of us rolled our eyes. Don’t they do that every year? Well this time they meant it, delivering a ceremony that felt tightlty scripted when needed, but enjoyably loose when there was capacity for it. The result was the most watchable Oscars in years, full of mischief and frivolity – John Cena streaking , I’m Just Ken – but never undercutting moments of real weight either. It helped that the big names turned up, by and large – where were you, Wes Anderson? You just won your first Oscar! – and most of them seemed incredibly game to boot. At last the Oscars feels like, well, the Oscars again .

Bradley Cooper studied conducting for six years to perfect his role as Leonard Bernstein in his extraordinary biopic of the great US composer

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A film about a dark visionary who bestrode the 20th century and changed history might be the Oscar favourite, but there’s another biopic to consider, also of a man whose genius made him one of the past century’s greatest figures, one whose creativity and musical gifts brought – and continue to bring – joy to millions. A man who also changed the world, but unequivocally for the better. I’m talking about Leonard Bernstein, of course, and Bradley Cooper’s Maestro , which looks at the great US conductor and composer through the lens of his marriage to Felicia Montealegre ( Carey Mulligan ).

Maestro is an extraordinary achievement by any standards. Not only is Cooper totally convincing as Bernstein over a four-decade period (much credit here to the extraordinary makeup work of Kazu Hiro, also Oscar-nominated) but he also co-wrote and directed the film. He studied conducting for six years and learned to play the piano ; such is his mastery of the maestro that members of today’s London Symphony Orchestra (who recreated the Ely Cathedral scene), who had also played under the real Bernstein in the 1980s, admitted to doing a double take when Cooper-as-Bernstein walked on set.

Alors que l'année touche à sa fin, les plateformes et studios mettent leurs billets verts sur la table pour décrocher les projets les plus prometteurs d'Hollywood. Amazon s'offre la nouvelle collaboration de Christian Bale et Bradley Cooper pour Noël.

Amazon MGM remporte une bataille féroce pour le prochain film de Bradley Cooper et Christian Bale

Director and star Bradley Cooper captures the warring dualities of the great conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein, but it’s Carey Mulligan, as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia, who is on career-best form

Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper, in a performance so expansive and exuberant that it easily upstages that controversial prosthetic nose ) was a man of contradictions. And for Cooper, in his second outing as a director (after A Star Is Born ), it’s this sense of perpetually warring sides to Bernstein’s psyche that proves to be central in his approach to this biopic. In a step up in terms of ambition and bravura, Cooper directs with a gusto and showmanship to match that of Bernstein at his most fevered and ecstatic. This style of film-making style can feel overbearing and ostentatious, and as such it won’t be for everyone, but there is much to admire here – in particular Carey Mulligan’s career-best performance as Bernstein’s wife, the actor Felicia Montealegre – and, of course, the heart-swelling, all-consuming music that sweeps through the drama in waves.

With its nonlinear structure, Maestro feels a little like a scrapbook of life moments – glittering career achievements; crackling explosions of domestic tension – and Cooper keeps up a zesty, kinetic energy throughout. It’s another way in which Bernstein’s restless essence is captured in the storytelling. For the most part, though, the picture is all about the conflicting dualities at the heart of this complicated man, which Cooper smartly reflects in the contrast between black-and-white segments and the rich, saturated colour scenes; in the tight, boxy aspect ratio of the early scenes compared with the wide-open opportunities of later life; and in the framing that places Leonard and Felicia together in the same room but also worlds apart.

As the Sag-Aftra strikes roll on, film schedules are being torn up and A-listers are ditching promotional duties. But what’s a film festival without the talent?

Picture the scene. A journalist flying to the Venice film festival earlier this week is wheeling her luggage through the duty-free shop on her way to the gate. Pausing to glance at the illuminated perfume ads gazing at her from among the whiskey bottles and the Toblerones bigger than cricket bats, she sees the face of Zendaya, the 27-year-old star of the Spider-Man and Dune franchises, her hair rippling against a violet sky as she sits astride a white steed to promote Lancôme’s fragrance Idôle.

It is an eye-catching image, but also a bittersweet one. The journalist finds herself dabbing away a tear as she realises that this is the closest she will get to Zendaya for the foreseeable future. She scurries off to catch her flight, pondering the strange and starless universe she is about to enter.