Blue Moon (15)

A really beautiful, funny performance from Ethan Hawke – directed by his great collaborator, Richard Linklater (Before trilogy, Boyhood) – anchors this witty and affecting study of a gifted artist on a downhill slide that feels like a backstage pass to a bygone era of old New York. 

Co-starring Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott, it’s set on March 31, 1943: Musical-theatre lyricist Lorenz Hart is at Sardi’s on the opening night of his former writing partner Richard Rodgers’s (Scott) Broadway triumph, ‘Oklahoma!’ Drowning his sorrows, he regales barkeep Eddie (Cannavale) with stories and snark about his loves and hates of song and screen, before the arrival of his college-age obsession, Elizabeth Weiland (Qualley) and the triumphant Rodgers.

“A sophisticated, satisfying tour de force” The Guardian