ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Richard Linklater, director of character-driven, dialogue-heavy dramas like “Boyhood” and “Before Sunrise” and charming hang-out comedies like “Dazed and Confused” and “Hit Man,” is back with a film combining both disciplines. “Blue Moon,” a biographical drama about famed Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, features what might be the greatest performance of frequent Linklater collaborator Ethan Hawke’s career.
828reviewsNOW look at the Linklater feature.
“BLUE MOON” (2025, 100 min., directed by Richard Linklater)
With “Blue Moon,” Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have worked together on nine different films, including The Before Trilogy, “Boyhood” and “Tape,” an underrateed favorite of mine. However, their latest is the first time Hawke has taken center stage. From top to bottom, “Blue Moon” is the Ethan Hawke show.
Hawke plays Lorenz “Larry” Hart, one half of the Broadway songwriting duo Rodgers and Hart, who spent 25 years writing together, producing enduring show tune standards like “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “My Funny Valentine” and the titular “Blue Moon.” The film is set on March 31, 1943, the opening night of “Oklahoma!,” the famed musical which Rodgers wrote with his second longtime collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein II. The action takes place almost entirely at the bar of Sardi’s, the famed Broadway restaurant. The cast is small, the action is minute and the monologues are long…