Composer Richard Rogers and lyracist Lorenz Hart worked together on 28 musicals and more than 500 songs, many of which are legendary classics of the Great American Songbook. Among them are My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, Manhattan, and the song of the film’s title, Blue Moon. Their partnership ended when Rogers, fed up with Hart’s unreliability, moved on and began working with Oscar Hammerstein II. Blue Moon takes place in 1943 on opening night of Rogers and Hammerstein’s first musical, the smash hit Oklahoma!. Hart has left the theater after watching only the first half, retiring to a theater district hang out to contemplate his life while waiting for the show to end and Rogers to appear for his congratulations.

Oscar Nominee, Best Original Screenplay
Oscar Nominee, Best Actor
Boston Society of Film Critics, Best Original Screenplay
Boston Society of Film Critics, Best Actor
Los Angeles Film Critics, Best Lead Performance
National Society of Film Critics, Best Actor
Toronto Film Critics, Best Actor
New York Online Film Critics, Best Actor
Women Film Critics Circle, Best Actor
SF Bay Area Film Critics, Best Actor

“Filming a sparkling script by Robert Kaplow (known for 2008’s Me and Orson Welles), Linklater works his wizardry with another single night’s articulate drama as he and Hawke did in Before Sunrise (1995).” – Nicolas Rapold, Sight and Sound

“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. A success like “Oklahoma!” makes them feel anointed.” – Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor

“It’s the kind of film a director and actor make when they’re completely simpatico, as Hawke and Linklater are, having sustained a working partnership since 1995’s Before Sunrise—you can’t make a movie as simultaneously joyous and melancholy as this one is without being fully in tune with each other.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“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.” – Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

“Although Blue Moon works on a small canvas, Linklater uses it to explore big things – shifting cultural tastes, professional jealousy, the vagaries of artistic collaboration, the weight of passing time. And he gives us an indelible portrait of a man who, for all his uncommon self-devouring brilliance, is driven by feelings that are all too human. Larry is lonely and frightened and looking for love, just like the rest of us.” John Power, Fresh Air (NPR)

“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. The fact that the film is named after its subject’s most beloved — and most despised by Hart himself — hit tells you everything.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

“A film that could have settled for being a masterclass in technique, but instead goes deeper, exploring questions of artistry, authorship, legacy.” NPR

“Had The Christophers just been a cross-generational punch-up, the sort of flinty showdown designed to throw off pleasurable sparks, you’d still walk away content. It remains a conduit for two of the best performances you’ll see all year.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

“The Christophers is largely a comedy, but it’s also about all that we gain and lose with age, and about how we sometimes need young people to bring us back to ourselves.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“Having lost the inspiration that guided him to greatness, Julian is an artist who can no longer paint, and Lori is an artist who has lost all confidence in there being a place for her work in the larger world. For all the undercurrents about fame, commodification, and reputation that flow through The Christophers, at its core is a more plaintive lament about what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back.” – Alison Willmore, Vulture

“Go see The Christophers. Show up, and support a tiny, talky experiment that has no relationship to IP or sequels or box-office projection. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s also never, as Lori grudgingly notes about Julian’s work, uninteresting. And in this cultural moment, that’s an authentic win.” – Elizabeth Weitzman, Time Out

“The Christophers is a work of criticism that deftly distinguishes different approaches to criticism.” ­– Justin Chang, The New Yorker 

“Brims with hilarious dialogue, lightly satirical observations of a culture that treats art as a commodity, and satisfying payoffs to a number of story elements planted early on.” – Seth Katz, Slant Magazine

“In the end, this film about artists becomes a work of art in its own right. The more you look at it, the more its many components reveal themselves to you.” – Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap

“Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a sardonic art legend who meets his intellectual match in frank preservationist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). In a test of wits and wills held mostly in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes both characters to return to their former passions through philosophical conversations that reflect his own career.” – Robert Daniels, Screen International

“It bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“The Christophers is a talky, at times incredibly funny, comedy drama with plot reversals that make it feel like it’s on the verge of a thriller. It doesn’t end up there, at least not strictly, but it’s unpredictable enough to never make us entirely sure just where it’s heading.” – Benjamin Lee, Guardian

“There’s no room for anything shy of genius in The Christophers, a crackling original drama about artistic legacy in all its facets, directed by Steven Soderbergh , from a script by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move) and starring two top-notch English actors of wildly different backgrounds and styles, Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, at the top of their respective games.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

“With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American Cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs. – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast