Blue Moon (2025)

Direction: Richard Linklater
Country: USA 

Richard Linklater—who also made the wonderful Nouvelle Vague this year—directs Blue Moon, a strong, impeccably staged biopic about the witty, technically sophisticated lyricist Lorenz Hart, who rose to prominence in the 1930s through his long collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers. Together, they created immortal jazz standards such as “Blue Moon”, “The Lady Is a Tramp”, “Manhattan”, and “My Funny Valentine”. The script by novelist Robert Kaplow—re-teaming with Linklater after Me and Orson Welles (2008)—offers more than enough to give us a precise sense of Hart’s personality and inner struggles.

Shot with controlled, precise camerawork, Blue Moon is beautifully rendered, anchored by powerhouse work from Ethan Hawke, who portrays the alcoholic lyricist with a mix of lively spark, reverence for beauty in all its forms, and deep poignancy. The narrative, set in 1934 New York, unfolds over one painful night at Hart’s favorite bar, capturing the bitterness of having to celebrate the massive success and rave reviews of Oklahoma!—Rodgers’ first Broadway show without him (this time collaborating with Oscar Hammerstein). At the same time, Hart confronts an abyss of despair as he feels used by his twenty-year-old protégé and production-designer-wannabe Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley).

Blue Moon sifts gently across a jazzy landscape with a heartfelt, sometimes bitter touch. Bursting with Hart’s sharp wit and mordant observations, the dialogue is a delight—inebriating, funny, sarcastic, and engrossing. The film’s visual and atmospheric formality may feel pronounced, but don’t let that deter you: this passionate account darts and hops with bracing energy, offering just enough depth to both warm and break your heart.

Observant in the way only Linklater can be, the film feels strikingly authentic and radiates a contagious pleasure. It is not a conventional biopic, but it’s cleverly attuned to emotional nuance, and that makes all the difference.

The Black Phone (2022)

Direction: Scott Derrickson
Country: USA 

Drastically uneven, the supernatural horror film The Black Phone is told through the eyes of Finney (Mason Thames), a reserved 13-year-old student bullied both in college and at home. The film, shot with a retro look and featuring Ethan Hawke as a deranged part-time magician and child abductor, is an adaptation of a short story by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill, and made head-poundingly boring by co-writter/director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, 2012; Doctor Strange, 2016). Failing in form and subject, this cinematic effort is perhaps too controlled in the proceedings, carrying poor choices in its attempt to alternate scary, dramatic and funny moments without really excelling in any of them. 

When abducted by The Grabber and locked in a soundproofed basement, Finney not only counts on the revelatory dreams of his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), but also on an old black rotary dial phone that allows him to talk with the previously victimized kids. The film is a tad better in its rabidly hostile final section, but that phone as a medium of communication doesn’t make much sense to me. Moreover, emotions never rang loud and true - the scenes with the siblings’ father (Jeremy Davies) is a persistent problem throughout, while Hawke, in his second collaboration with Derrickson, hides behind a devil mask and won’t be remembered for this role. 

The Black Phone quickly reveals its true face: a clumsy thriller that drags its ambitions far beyond its means, forging ahead with the kind of conviction that will keep horror thriller junkies sitting bolt upright. Are you there? Hello? I’m hanging up now… What a shame!

Blaze (2018)

Direction: Ethan Hawke
Country: USA

Better known as an actor, Ethan Hawke decided not to star in Blaze, a film he directed and co-wrote about the American country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. Hawke may not make all perfect choices in this well-intended adaptation of Blaze’s ex-wife memoir, particularly in terms of duration and dynamics. However, he succeeds in enveloping the viewer with that same digressive sarcasm and melancholic torpor that got the musician, an alcohol-drenched, ZZ Top-like bearded man who died at the young age of 39. He once affirmed: “I don’t want to be a star. I want to be a legend". Real-life musician Ben Dickey played the character adeptly, in what was his first acting role.

On the gnarling inaugural scene, probably the most vivid of the film, a wasted Blaze and his junkie friend, the folk singer Townes Van Zandt (Charlie Sexton), drive a studio manager crazy. Blaze’s story, then unfolds as Van Zandt and Zee (Josh Hamilton), another musician, give an interview about the former's latest album.

The flashbacks, filtered with yellowish monochromatic warmth, show the ups and downs of the long relationship with his supportive Jewish lover, Sybil Rosen (Alia Shawkat), who would become his wife. After enduring disenchantment associated with Blaze’s drinking problem, she was forced to move on, leaving him in a pitiful state of decadence, playing songs about his life experiences for indifferent people in small, nearly empty southern pubs.

Capturing the emotional subterfuges of an artist you’ve probably never heard of, the film never felt less than thoroughly lived-in by a cast that was permanently in the care of making this small work a bigger achievement. It’s a lengthy, inebriating, and casually funny experience that didn’t fall into the usual traps of biographical films.