Blue Moon (2025)

Richard Linklater has been busy recently. Last year he was on our screens with the release of Hit Man; the blackly comedic romantic drama starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona which, although fun, didn't come close to the heights of Linklater's best work. This year sees the release of Blue Moon- only a couple of months before Linklater's Nouvelle Vague also hits theatres.

Blue Moon follows lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) on the night of Oklahoma!'s Broadway opening- the new hit musical by his former partner Richard Rogers (Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein II. Instead of rejoicing with the crowd, Hart slips away to Sardi's bar in New York, where the entire film takes place.

Hart, once one of the most acclaimed Broadway songwriters on the scene before alcohol fully took hold- is now the drunk slumped at the bar, or in the case of Blue Moon, the man who sits at the bar and reminisces with barman Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) whilst telling him all about a young girl he's fallen hopelessly in love with, Elizabeth, (Margaret Qualley), despite everyone assuming he was gay.

Elizabeth has promised to meet Lorenz at the bar, where an after party is taking place following Oklahoma! and we eventually get to meet Lorenz's former partner, wonderfully portrayed by Andrew Scott.

This is it- the simple, stage-like set-up, and yet this is one of the best films Linklater has made since Boyhood (2014) and one of his finest full stop. Scripted by Robert Kaplow, Linklater pulls a career best performance from Hawke, surely one good enough to see him at the very least, nominated for an Oscar. His Lorenz is insufferable, and yet Hawke's ability to convince you of his tragic life and slump into drinking- and make you feel sorry for a character that simply won't shut up is simply remarkable. The final third of the film takes in a conversation between Lorenz and Elizabeth is heart-breaking yet amusing, and leaves you torn between laughter and tears. We know from the film's opening shot- where Hart falls down in a gutter, ultimately dying four days later of pneumonia- that this is one of the final nights of his life, and Hawke's brilliance in completely selling you this characters is an absolute joy to behold, despite the tragic nature of his demise.

In the hands of anyone else, Blue Moon could have felt like a stilted and disjointed attempt at taking a stage show and shoe horning it into a feature film. Instead, the original script from Kaplow combined with Linklater's wizardry behind the camera and the genius of Hawke, mean that Blue Moon is one of the best films of 2025. You're constantly engaged with what's unfolding on the screen, completely tied into Lorenz's cynical take on everything that's going on- and yet he so obviously needs to be loved and appreciated to function. Over the course of the evening, we realise that at this stage of his life despite the fact Lorenz might need the adoration of others, they don't necessarily need him any more. This is the crux of Blue Moon, and what we see and hear brilliantly unfurl in Linklater's quite exceptional film. Lorenz Hart was a very clever man, a genius many would argue. But he was undone by his own problems in the end. Thankfully Blue Moon is near genius, and isn't undone by anything. It's really something. 8.7/10