Blue Moon
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: October 17, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
37
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithOct 16, 2025
Directed by his longtime friend and collaborator Richard Linklater, Mr. Hawke makes the most of what might be the year’s most brilliant screenplay, by Robert Kaplow, by delivering a Hart full of mischief and wit, desperation and self-loathing. There has never been a great book written about Hart, but at last he has this movie to renew and restore his story. Read full review
90
The AtlanticDavid SimsNov 6, 2025
Despite the wistful tone, it’s a bitingly funny viewing experience. Shrunken to Hart’s height and given his balding pate, Hawke is transfixing in the role; as Hart, he holds everyone’s attention whenever he’s monologuing. Read full review
90
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 23, 2025
Blue Moon may essentially take place inside a single room, but it rarely feels stagy. It captures the connivance and conviviality of theater people – the way they come together, if only for a night, with a spiritedness that is both forced and entirely genuine. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesTim GriersonOct 20, 2025
Of the many artists Hawke has honored on screen, he has never depicted one so touchingly diminished — someone so consumed with envy who nonetheless cannot lie to himself about the beauty of the art around him. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonOct 16, 2025
The way to enjoy Blue Moon — and I think it’s terrifically enjoyable, despite the bright thread of melancholy running down the middle — is to settle into the theatricality, especially Hawke’s performance. Read full review
90
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 8, 2025
Linklater’s latest is a moving and multifaceted ode to a bygone era and an artist whose creativity and contradictions were equally titanic. Read full review
90
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaFeb 28, 2025
Set during a single, legendary evening, Richard Linklater’s Broadway biopic unveils the life and anxieties of songwriter Lorenz Hart through rapid-fire conversations, led by an incredible Ethan Hawke. Read full review
90
Screen DailyLee MarshallFeb 18, 2025
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. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 18, 2025
Blue Moon is a deceptively modest project, but it’s beautifully executed and fascinatingly nuanced despite being quite straightforward in terms of plot. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 22, 2025
This is a film about a professional divorce, not a romantic one. The fallout is just as painful. Read full review
88
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiOct 20, 2025
As for Broadway buffs and lovers of old New York, the witty, hilarious and haunting movie starring a totally transformed Ethan Hawke as musical-theater lyricist Lorenz Hart will have them utterly bewitched. Read full review
88
The Travers TakePeter TraversOct 17, 2025
Ethan Hawke gives one of his greatest performances as a Broadway musical legend who ends up breaking his own heart in Ricard Linklater’s enthralling, encapsulated biopic Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleOct 15, 2025
One of the more sheerly delightful movies of the year. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 5, 2025
Working from a script by Robert Kaplow, Linklater has crafted one of his finest dramedies, a consistently fascinating exploration of the frailty of the artist, buoyed by one of Ethan Hawke’s most remarkable performances. Read full review
83
The PlaylistSavina PetkovaFeb 18, 2025
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. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid OpieFeb 18, 2025
Ethan Hawke is theatrical in the best way possible, commanding the screen with his every gesture and utterance without overplaying any of them. Read full review
80
Radio TimesJames MottramDec 5, 2025
It’s a tender – and sometimes affecting – portrait of the artist, one that hopefully will allow modern audiences to remember the contributions Lorenz Hart made to popular culture. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 27, 2025
Blue Moon is both a modest movie and a dazzling, generous work. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreOct 17, 2025
Lorenz is the kind of role that Hawke thrives in — a big talker and a self-mythologizer who everyone can’t help but like, despite being aware that he’s mostly full of shit. He wisely approaches the character like he’s giving a performance of a performance, his Lorenz committing himself as thoroughly as he can to acting like someone who’s happy and having a good time despite everything in his life crumbling away. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 16, 2025
It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. Read full review
80
The RevealKeith PhippsOct 16, 2025
Hawke’s ability to convey flashes of self-awareness elevates his performance from a brilliant impression to a fully realized tragic portrait. Read full review
80
IONCINEMA.comNicholas BellOct 16, 2025
Blue Moon provides us with a myriad of its own words with which to approach the essence of Lorenz Hart, who it would seem, died much too young and without a love of his own. But the lasting impression of the film and its subject is, indeed, ineffable. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 10, 2025
Blue Moon revels in a fine mind and a great soul, and Hawke’s embodiment of both is exalted and startling. Read full review
80
Time OutStephen A. RussellMar 18, 2025
You can expect Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman-like banter from Robert Kaplow’s finely-tuned screenplay, an expert evocation of the ‘40s. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 18, 2025
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. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerOct 22, 2025
Much as Blue Moon is a eulogy for the death of a creative life, it’s also a testament to Linklater’s continued vitality as a filmmaker. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 24, 2025
Linklater really nails the atmosphere here; watching Blue Moon feels like sitting with smart people in a retro bar, covered in a gentle blanket of cocktail piano. And Hawke, often surrounded by wafting symphonies of cigar smoke, gives a beautifully shaded performance, of equal parts bravado and vulnerability. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyOct 23, 2025
The script by Richard Kaplow, who wrote Linklater’s 2008 film Me and Orson Welles, feels as though it were adapted from an off-Broadway play, with the action mostly in one location over the course of one night, March 31, 1943, the opening night of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma! Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 22, 2025
The quiet intensity of “Blue Moon” is at times agonizing. Any more would have been too much. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKatarina DocalovichFeb 28, 2025
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. Read full review
75
TheWrapBen CrollFeb 19, 2025
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.) Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferFeb 18, 2025
Blue Moon, like Lorenz Hart in his day, trusts that audiences want to engage with subjects that matter through deliberate dialogue. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensOct 31, 2025
Blue Moon feels like the more major entry in the director’s filmography, if only because it marks a new epoch in his ever-evolving partnership with Hawke. Read full review
70
Screen RantRachel LaBonteSep 7, 2025
As a character study, Blue Moon is imperfect, but its smart framing of a pivotal moment in Hart's life elevates it. Read full review
70
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 5, 2025
Linklater reminds us that he's still able to make two people simply sitting around and talking fascinating. After all these years, the pair of Hawke and Linklater remains a winning combination. Read full review
63
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 6, 2025
Blue Moon is a portrait of a man on the precipice of an artistic and personal cliff (we learn in the opening sequence that Hart would die within the year, at the age of 48). Mostly, though, the movie is about Hawke talking. Read full review
63
Washington PostNaveen KumarOct 24, 2025
The movie does not demystify a rarefied world, or paint an emotionally accessible portrait of the artist, but rather assembles a somewhat stuffy compendium of literary references and insider-y bons mots aimed at tickling theater aficionados. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyDec 12, 2025
We are never distracted for long from the gaping sadness of the man and Hawke is brilliant at portraying that despair. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 26, 2025
Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon features a luminous ensemble and arguably a career-high performance from Ethan Hawke, yet it’s hobbled by an aesthetic gamble so distracting, so patently absurd, that it nearly sinks the enterprise. Read full review
60
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsNov 26, 2025
There are points here where it feels as if Linklater was trying to make a gender-switched version of Fassbinder’s tragic The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, but without really leaning into the forceful bitterness and agency of the protagonist, and opting to have the text make a more profound point about the precarious nature of power and influence. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearOct 15, 2025
Portraits of great men given the movie-star treatment usually accentuate the positive. Linklater finds it more interesting to look at a self-sabotaging artist’s greatest misses. It’s a tribute that’s really a cautionary tale. Read full review
60
The IndependentGeoffrey MacnabFeb 18, 2025
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. Read full review
40
The TimesKevin MaherFeb 18, 2025
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. Read full review
More From This Movie

78 Critic Reviews

tbd User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL