Blue Moon (2025)
Directed by Richard Linklater
On the evening of March 31, 1943, legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart confronts his shattered self-confidence in Sardi’s bar as his former collaborator, Richard Rodgers, celebrates the opening night of his ground-breaking hit musical, “Oklahoma!”
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26 films that influenced Blue Moon
What critics say influenced Blue Moon
Nouvelle Vague, his drama about the making of Godard’s Breathless…
Nouvelle Vague, his film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, is shot in the style of the French New Wave.
Nouvelle Vague (which comes to these shores in early 2026) captures the irrepressible creative zeal of Jean-Luc Godard and his ragtag crew while making Breathless on the streets of Paris.
…his black-and-white movie about a young Jean-Luc Godard, turned the making of Breathless into a “let’s put on a show” lark…
As if we are to believe that nugget of advice led to the making of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting?”
It seems even more contrived that he should also have similar meet-cutes with Stephen Sondheim and George Roy Hill (he’s simply referred to as “George Hill” and who will recognize him as the future director of “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”) in the same evening.
As if we are to believe that nugget of advice led to the making of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting?”
It seems even more contrived that he should also have similar meet-cutes with Stephen Sondheim and George Roy Hill (he’s simply referred to as “George Hill” and who will recognize him as the future director of “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”) in the same evening.
…the novel "Me and Orson Welles," which was adapted into a film in 2008…
This is not the first time Linklater has created portraits of renowned artists. “Me and Orson Welles,” one of his most underrated features, covers the life of a teenager who is hired to star in Orson Welles’ production of Julius Caesar.
Director Richard Linklater and screenwriter Robert Kaplow previously worked together on the cinematic adaptation of Kaplow’s novel Me and Orson Welles, which was released in 2008.
Robert Kaplow (who previously wrote another of Linklater’s finest films, “Me and Orson Welles”) provides the right words for their music.
Linklater has a genuine and sincere interest in American theatre, as in Me and Orson Welles, and Blue Moon comes from the same writer, Robert Kaplow.
The script by novelist Robert Kaplow—re-teaming with Linklater after Me and Orson Welles (2008)—offers more than enough…
A good litmus test to determine if you will appreciate Blue Moon would be to consider how you feel about Hawke’s charming, philosophizing, and desperately needy Jesse in Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
Before Sunrise, and the subsequent Before trilogy, is one of Richard Linklater’s finest films.
It’s been thirty years since the first collaboration between actor Ethan Hawke and filmmaker Richard Linklater, when they began working on the now beloved ‘Before’ trilogy.
…including the marvelous "Before Trilogy"…
Linklater is uniquely suited to this project, having previously made “Before Sunrise” and “Dazed and Confused,” films consisting largely of extended conversations over a single evening.
…almost making this feel like a spiritual sibling to his entries of The Before Trilogy…
From the rom-con spy games in “Hitman” to the French New Wave tricks in “Nouvelle Vague,” he is not done mixing and matching.
Crisply directed by Richard Linklater — who landed not one but two movies on my 10 Best of 2025 list (Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague)…
Nouvelle Vague, his film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, is shot in the style of the French New Wave. Blue Moon, which tells the story of lyricist Lorenz Hart, is a chamber piece that unfolds with the intimacy of live theater. However, despite being released in the same month, the two works could not be more different.
Richard Linklater—who also made the wonderful Nouvelle Vague this year—directs Blue Moon…
This year alone, he’s been able to hang out in the 1959 inception of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), and in the 1943 premier night for “Oklahoma!”
…like either his 2025 twinbill of Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague…
“Dazed and Confused” this is not, yet “Blue Moon” captures the cigarette-stained pulse of 1940s Broadway with intoxicating detail.
Linklater is uniquely suited to this project, having previously made “Before Sunrise” and “Dazed and Confused,” films consisting largely of extended conversations over a single evening.
Thanks to the divergent range between the likes of Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and Everybody Wants Some!! and the other side of the cinematic coin, holding Boyhood, Bernie, and the Before trilogy, there’s “Party Linklater” and “Prestige Linklater.”
There is too much respect for him for the “Dazed and Confused” director to do so.
From the iconic Before Trilogy, to Boyhood, to Dazed and Confused, all of these films are bursting with love and personality, united by a common thread: Richard Linklater either co-wrote, or solo wrote all of them.
Someone who may not have understood Before Midnight upon its release might revisit it years later and find that it now hits painfully close to home.
Before Sunrise, and the subsequent Before trilogy, is one of Richard Linklater’s finest films.
…including the marvelous "Before Trilogy"…
…almost making this feel like a spiritual sibling to his entries of The Before Trilogy…
…the Before trilogy, which revisited the same characters in the three chronological locations of 1995, 2004 and 2013 while several scenes in each trilogy feel like little bubbles of frozen time…
It’s also Linklater’s first sealed bottle drama since Tape, his overlooked exercise in tension from 2001.
There are points here where it feels as if Linklater was trying to make a gender-switched version of Fassbinder’s tragic The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, but without really leaning into the forceful bitterness and agency of the protagonist, and opting to have the text make a more profound point about the precarious nature of power and influence.
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Thanks to the forced perspective made famous in the “Lord of the Rings” franchise…
…the more ground a movie tries to cover, the more it risks feeling like Walk Hard, a comedy that should be required viewing for anyone even considering making a biopic…
The script isn’t above a little fan service with a Midnight in Paris-style parade of cameos from E.B. White, George Roy Hill, and an adolescent Stephen Sondheim.
…ever since “The Shape of Water” (2017), I tend to get suspicious of straight people framing a gay man as a tragic, lonely character…
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The film frequently references 1940s cinematic milestones, but none more so than Casablanca, with the bar setting serving as a deliberate homage.
Lorenz speaks out on various other subjects throughout the night, like the dialogue in that great new film, “Casablanca,” and what he finds most erotic (the latter can’t be shared here).
Hart works through some acerbic routines that display his feel for language- complaining about a line in Casablanca, ‘you can’t break a precedent’ he complains.
…canciones recordadas, diálogos citados —incluso aquel célebre “No one ever loved me that much” de Casablanca— y fantasías amorosas que existen porque Hart, y solo Hart, puede verbalizarlas.
Casablanca is a touchstone through the film, with Hart skewering it at one point yet revealing a love for it elsewhere.
…begins to chastise the merits of Casablanca…
Hawke plays Hart as a raconteur and wit, a saucy barfly whose lack of self control and easy recourse to deception and self-depreciation recalls Ray Milland’s character in the 1945 alcoholism drama, The Lost Weekend.