Blue Moon evaluation – Ethan Hawke deserves an Oscar in one in every of 2025’s greatest movies | Films | Entertainment | EUROtoday

Director Richard Linklater groups up as soon as once more with four-time Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke in a efficiency that basically ought to win him his first Academy Award.

He stars as Lorenz Hart, the previous artistic associate of Richard Rodgers, with whom he collaborated on 28 stage musicals, contributing tons of of basic American songs as Rodgers and Hart.

Among them is Blue Moon, that includes Hart’s lyrics of unfulfilled longing and loneliness.

Screenwriter Robert Kaplow selected this because the movie’s title, with the track’s themes tragically radiating by Hawke’s phenomenal lead all through.

The setting is Sardi’s restaurant in New York City on March 31, 1943. The bar-fly lyricist (7 months off an unintentional alcohol-related demise) awaits the arrival of Rodgers and his new collaborator, Hammerstein, on the opening evening of their hit new Broadway present, Oklahoma!

Before the primary social gathering’s arrival, the washed-up Hart places on his greatest Blanche duBois bravado, as Hawke embodies his enthralling wit and charisma in a quietly devastating efficiency. Aided by Kaplow’s superbly penned script, the middle-aged lyricist boasts of an amazing afterparty he’ll be internet hosting later and expectations of sexual conquest with Margaret Qualley’s 20-year-old Elizabeth, regardless of Bobby Cannavale’s gruff barman questioning his sexuality. When Andrew Scott’s Rodgers enters, his portrayal of the composer masterfully shows the advanced relationship between the pair: the mutual respect, love and admiration barely overlaying the frustration at Hart’s alcoholism, which led to their artistic cut up within the first place.

Although it is a comedy-drama with loads of scrumptious moments, Hawke is so masterful in portraying the unfulfilled yearnings of this musical nice’s private and non-private ambitions that the emotional weight of all of it stays with you effectively after the credit roll.

Blue Moon is out in UK cinemas on Friday.