Blue Moon · reception & legacy
2025 · Richard Linklater
How Blue Moon has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Premiered at Berlinale in February 2025 to warm reviews, then got a quiet fall arthouse rollout from Sony Pictures Classics — it's already being talked about as the smaller, more personal half of Linklater's remarkable two-film 2025, opposite Nouvelle Vague.
What's debated
The recurring fan debate: is this minor, modest Linklater or is Ethan Hawke's turn as Lorenz Hart quietly one of his career-best performances — and which of Linklater's two 2025 films is actually the keeper?
Its footprint
It lives as a new chapter in the Linklater–Hawke lore — their ninth collaboration in three decades — with Hawke startlingly transformed, balding comb-over and all, into lyricist Lorenz Hart, a jolt for anyone who knows him as Jesse from the Before films.
Where it stands
Too new for canon but already filed by Letterboxd talkers alongside the great one-night, one-room hangout films — a 'for the Linklater heads' picture people keep calling secretly one of his most personal.