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Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon lands like a sober punch in the face of what passes for modern Hollywood spectacle, and Ethan Hawke delivers the kind of performance that makes you remember why movies matter. Hawke disappears into the role of lyricist Lorenz Hart with a brittle mix of humor and self-destruction, reminding patriotic moviegoers that craftsmanship still exists even in an age of cynicism and cheap spectacle. This isn’t just another awards play; it’s a portrait of longing and collapse that refuses to flatter the comfortable narratives of our culture.
Set on the historic night the musical Oklahoma! premiered, Blue Moon watches Hart as he confronts a professional and personal unraveling while everyone else celebrates, a cramped and elegant chamber piece about a man who has been left behind by a changing industry. Linklater stages the film like a long, cutting conversation at a bar — theatrical, intimate, and unforgiving — forcing viewers to reckon with a kind of human desire that is messy, unheroic, and unbearably American in its consequences. The film’s period detail and talky intelligence mean it won’t pander to the streaming scroll; it asks for attention and thought, two commodities in short supply.
Make no mistake: Hollywood will try to wrap this in awards-season rhetoric and call it progressive empathy, but conservatives should be the first to praise a movie that refuses to moralize the pain of a real man. The film portrays Hart not as a caricature but as a complex, often contradictory figure whose failings are human and universal, and that kind of honesty is a rebuke to the culture of victim tribes and moral performance. We can admire the art without swallowing the industry’s packaged politics, and Blue Moon gives us a rare chance to do exactly that.
Blue Moon’s release was handled with old-fashioned care — festival premieres and a staggered theatrical rollout — the way real cinema used to be treated before the streaming overlords flattened every release into an algorithmic blur. The film premiered on the festival circuit and then rolled out to theaters in October 2025, proving there is still a market for movies that demand presence and patience from their audience. That measured approach is a sign that studios can still make space for serious adult storytelling if there is the will to do so.
The physical work Hawke put into the role is impossible to ignore: he shaved the top of his head, altered his posture, and relied on careful staging to appear diminished next to his co-stars, all to capture Hart’s shrunken presence. The makeup and staging choices are brutal and precise, a craft-driven insistence on truth over glamour that conservatives should celebrate as the antithesis of Hollywood’s usual self-worship. This kind of discipline — the willingness to look ugly for the sake of truth — is what makes Hawke’s turn feel like the performance of the year.
Critics have noticed, and audiences who still crave honest storytelling have responded: Blue Moon’s critical reception shows that quality still resonates when it’s allowed to breathe. Praise from reviewers is not the same as a left-wing manifesto; it’s acknowledgment that a hard, unsentimental look at human desire can be beautiful and instructive. Conservatives ought to be loud about that distinction — we should defend work that exposes human weakness and calls people to reflection rather than telling them how to think.
At a moment when too much of Hollywood either preaches or performs, Blue Moon asks us simply to watch and feel, and that’s a conservative value as much as it is an artistic one. Support films that demand moral seriousness, craftsmanship, and the courage to portray people whole, even their worst parts. If hardworking Americans want real art back, they should walk into theaters and show the industry that honesty sells.
