Screening times:
Sunday, February 15, 7:30 PM

Richard Linklater | USA | 2025 | 100m

On the evening of March 31, 1943, legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart confronts his shattered self confidence in the legendary Manhattan bar, Sardi’s, as his former collaborator Richard Rodgers celebrates the opening night of his ground-breaking hit Oklahoma! with new partner, Oscar Hammerstein. By the time this night is over, Hart will have confronted both a world that no longer values his talent and the seeming impossibility of love.

Following that night, over the course of over 16 years, Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to become the most successful songwriting team in American musical theatre history (South Pacific, Carousel, The King and I, Sound of Music). Despite his fears, Hart has never been forgotten. He wrote the lyrics to songs like "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is A Tramp," and “Blue Moon.”

Richard Linklater, an American creative icon himself thanks to films like Dazed And Confused, the Before... trilogy, and Boyhood, captures the vanity of Hart through a transcendent script by Robert Kaplow and a performance from the almost unrecognizable lead, Ethan Hawke. 

“...Blue Moon is nostalgic for old Broadway glamour, but also acutely attuned to the desolation behind the glitz. Not so much old-fashioned, then, as resembling an Old Fashioned: freshly mixed, generous with the bitters.” - Jonathan Romney, Financial Times

“Directed by Richard Linklater, from a crisply bittersweet screenplay by Robert Kaplow, Blue Moon is as elegantly witty and luxuriantly melancholic as one of Rogers and Hart’s toe-tapping, heart-swelling compositions.” - Wendy Ide, Observer (UK)

“Richard Linklater’s sensitive portrayal of American lyricist Lorenz Hart, played with a witty, frenetic energy by Ethan Hawke, brings us deep into the gossipy theatre-crowd milieu of old New York.” - Nicolas Rapold, Sight & Sound

Winner: National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor - Ethan Hawke

Tickets $12 ($11.40 cash at the door if available)