Maestro: to its credit, Bradley Cooper’s biopic of Leonard Bernstein is less interested in the factual trajectory of his musical career, focusing instead on his complex marriage to Felicia Montealegre. That doesn’t mean his music is ignored; it was too much an integral part of his being. The less conventional a biopic, the better this is; alas, it eventually starts to fall on rails in its second half and starts to drag a bit. Cooper, aided by the spectacular prosthetic make-up work of Kazu Hiro, does a very good recreation of the man’s speech patterns and his physical performance at the conductor’s podium and also builds on his emotional complexity. Carey Mulligan, however, is who owns the film as his long-suffering wife, who had to compete with his self-loathing and bisexuality; it is a quietly beautiful performance. Editor Michelle Tesoro is playful early on, mostly during the black-and-white session of the film. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique also has some bravura shots early on, but his and Cooper’s choice to let some emotionally charged scenes play out in one take, from a distance, is rather interesting; those scenes, after all, can be powerful enough without the need for additional accentuating from the editor.