Metacritic reviews

Blue Moon is a deceptively modest project, but it’s beautifully executed and fascinatingly nuanced despite being quite straightforward in terms of plot.

Blue Moon, which plays out on the night of the premiere of Rogers and Hammerstein’s first hit, Oklahoma!, is a romantic, funny, moving, life-affirming chamber piece that is itself a great example of a three-way creative collaboration – between director Richard Linklater, writer Robert Kaplow and actor Ethan Hawke.

Ethan Hawke is theatrical in the best way possible, commanding the screen with his every gesture and utterance without overplaying any of them.

Yes, the film is a heartfelt homage to Lorenz Hart, but also to the strength necessary to say goodbye to the world as you knew it, so even the occasional bitterness Hart speaks with has a balmy quality to it.

Like a backstage pass for Broadway buffs, it’s one hell of a show for those in the know, and a sparkling introduction for the uninitiated.

Blue Moon, like Lorenz Hart in his day, trusts that audiences want to engage with subjects that matter through deliberate dialogue.

Without ever leaving the bar, Blue Moon offers a snapshot of wartime America expressed wholly through shifting public tastes (and the attending egos left shattered.)

Though this can seem like a quibble, the cheated blocking Linklater uses to make Hawke look comically shorter than Scott distracts from some truly great writing.

The Texan auteur’s new film – his 22nd, and the first of two due for release in this year alone – boasts a fine, quirky and courageous performance from Ethan Hawke, but it’s a stagey affair which at times becomes very stilted.

One of the most committed performances of Ethan Hawke’s career is cruelly undercut by some ridiculous “shrinking” tricks in this biopic about the Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart.