Instead of the usual review, there is a better way to break down the emotional brilliance of A Star Is Born.
Firstly, let us discuss Bradley Cooper, the actor, and the one scene that hammers home just how deserving he is of that Best Actor Nomination.
Early in the movie, not too long after his introduction as famous Country & Western singer Jackson Maine, performing to packed arenas, but hampered by a powerful drinking problem, he asks his driver to bring him to a bar. Any bar.
They find a gay bar, Cooper goes in for a drink, and it just so happens that Ally (Lady Gaga) is performing that night, and in the middle of her performance, the two make eye contact for a moment, and in that moment, Cooper delivers one of cinema's most immediate and intense portrayals of love at first sight.
Without saying a single word, and using little more than drunken micro-reactions, we can see his brain light up with the possibilities of this woman in front of him. The chemistry is immediate, and the emotion of the moment is conveyed so perfectly, it is absolutely staggering.
Secondly, we need to talk about Lady Gaga, the actor.
There might be a moment of hesitancy to accepting Gaga as Ally, as the ever-glamourous leader of a world full of her own little Monsters, here she meekly plays someone who is so used to rejection that she uses it as an eject button to get out of situations that are actually going well for her.
However, it isn't long before Gaga's Ally has completely won us over, her optimism and endurance and pure love for Jackson get us on her side, and ensure that they keep us there, too. At times her performance is so naturalistic and relatable that it is easy to forget that this is the artist who once arrived at an awards ceremony in a giant egg.
Just like Cooper, the conversations about Oscars is incredibly well-deserved.
Clip via Warner Bros. Pictures
Finally, and inseparably, we need to discuss both Bradley Cooper, the director, and Lady Gaga, the singer.
Yep, Cooper pulls double duty on the movie (triple, actually, as he's also a co-writer), and during the scenes in which he directs Gaga's performances as Ally, it is difficult to conjure up a comparison in terms of raw talent and even rawer emotion on the big screen.
The songs - some of which were co-written and/or co-produced by the likes of Mark Ronson, DJ White Shadow, Diane Warren, Andrew Wyatt, and Lucas (son of Willie) Nelson - perfectly mirror the emotion of the movie, simultaneously overflowing with love, passion, joy, regret, hesitancy, concern, and heartbreak.
From Ally's first big-stage performance, during which Gaga not only nails the song but also imbues the scene with a barely-capped sense of overwhelming elation, to a song later in the movie, in which a single, surgically-precise edit will have the entire audience in tears (you'll know it when you see it).
Both Cooper the director and Gaga the singer combine their talents, and in the process, they completely blow away any expectations of what either of them might have been capable of.
A Star Is Born is released in Irish cinemas from Wednesday 3 October.
