Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths 2022
Cited as the exception to Iñárritu's usual mix of commercial reach and awards traction; the one that drew neither. Amanda mainly remembers the apartment's tile work.
The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Top Five · Interview
The Top Five Ethan Hawke Movies and a Double Shot of Richard Linklater, With Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater!
November 17, 2025/ 107 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins review Richard Linklater's two 2025 films: Nouvelle Vague, a black-and-white recreation of Godard shooting Breathless, and Blue Moon, a one-night portrait of washed-up lyricist Lorenz Hart with Ethan Hawke shaved bald and scaled down to five feet. They handicap a crowded Best Actor race, each rank their five favorite Hawke performances, then Sean talks with Hawke and Linklater, who spent more than a decade getting Blue Moon made.
68 films across 11 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The Governors Awards and the start of Oscar seasonhonorary Oscars, and a Cruise theory
Sinners 2025
Sean's evidence that an April release can still contend, waved off against worries that Cruise's next Iñárritu film landing in summer 2026 hurts its Oscar odds. Tom Cruise took an honorary Oscar this night, a year before that bid; Sean wants him to get a real one.
The live-action 'Moana' teaseranother Disney remake nobody asked for
Moana 2016
Turns ten in 2026, still in heavy rotation in the Fennessey house, which is why a remake this soon feels odd. Sean can perform 'How Far I'll Go' start to finish and rates it a masterpiece.
Moana 2 2024
The sequel arrived just last year, part of why the property never left the culture long enough to need reviving.
Avatar: The Way of Water 2022
What the live-action Moana teaser looked like to both of them: the island, the water, the creatures. It reads as animated anyway.
The Lion King 2019
The recent benchmark for the largest gap between original and remake, roughly 25 years, unlike Moana's ten.
Beauty and the Beast 2017
Held up alongside Lion King as a remake that at least recreated some 'ancient magic'; the Moana redo doesn't even have that excuse.
The Little Mermaid 1989
Moana as heir to Ariel's break-from-home journey, minus the man and the covetousness, which is part of why it lands as one of the good Disney films.
Zootopia 2 2025
On track to be one of the year's biggest movies, and a problem for the schedule: where does a Zootopia 2 conversation even fit.
A new 'Sense and Sensibility'Focus is readapting the 1995 classic
Sense and Sensibility 1995
Ang Lee's version, Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning script and lead, with Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Hugh Laurie. Getting a 30th-anniversary theatrical rerelease in December; the new Georgia Oakley adaptation with Daisy Edgar-Jones is dated for next September and, per set photos, staying in period. Amanda recommends Thompson's out-of-print production diaries.
Blue Jean 2022
Georgia Oakley's previous film, which made Sean expect a modern reimagining of Austen rather than a straight period piece.
Hedda 2025
Nia DaCosta's reinterpretation of Hedda Gabler, which Amanda started at 7:30 a.m.; held up as the kind of reimagining the Sense and Sensibility redo apparently isn't.
Pride & Prejudice 2005
Joe Wright's film, whose most famous prior adaptation was a TV series, so the format itself felt new; the Sense and Sensibility redo is film-to-film, which Amanda calls trickier.
Clueless 1995
An update of Emma, cited alongside Bridget Jones as proof Austen gets remade and reworked constantly.
Bridget Jones's Diary 2001
An update of Pride and Prejudice, part of the case that no single Austen text is too sacred to redo.
Belfast 2021
Invoked so Sean could note how good Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan look in it; Balfe is set to play the widowed Mrs. Dashwood, which makes both hosts feel old.
The English Patient 1996
The one from their movie-swap that Sean was more down on; brought up while sorting out who liked what.
'Nouvelle Vague'Linklater recreates the making of 'Breathless'
Nouvelle Vague 2025
Shot on Kodak black-and-white in period aspect ratio, down to how the subtitles sit on screen, so it plays like a film from 1959. A day-by-day account of Godard on the verge of shooting Breathless, never showing a frame of the finished film. The hangout scenes (the Cahiers office, shit-talking a screening) are the best of it, 'Everybody Wants Some!! for the New Wave'; the actual making-of stunts a bit, and Zoë Deutch as Jean Seberg speaking French in an American accent is, per Amanda, implausible and grating. Guillaume Marbeck's Godard resemblance carries it. Premiered at Cannes, streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
Breathless 1960
Godard's film, the framework the movie recreates without ever showing. Already so well-chronicled that Sean found the recreation a little stunty; he rewatched it (streaming on HBO Max) to situate the new film.
Me and Orson Welles 2008
The last time Linklater dropped into a period to dramatize a great artist at work, written by the same duo, Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo.
Everybody Wants Some!! 2016
Sean's touchstone for the parts that work: friends hanging out, kicking ideas around, needling each other, the mode nobody does better than Linklater.
'Blue Moon'Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, one night at Sardi's
Blue Moon 2025
One of Sean's favorite films of the year. 1943, opening night of Oklahoma!: lyricist Lorenz Hart (Hawke, head shaved, combed over, scaled to five feet, and, per Sean, desperate and unloved) waits at Sardi's for his old partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott). An all-in-one-place movie shot unfussily in 15 days, written by Robert Kaplow. Margaret Qualley plays a Yale student Hart pines for; E.B. White and a young Stephen Sondheim wander through. The rain-fall prologue is the one thing both hosts wish weren't there.
Casablanca 1942
Quoted between the characters in the opening ('nobody ever loved me that much'), setting the film's love of old Hollywood right in the text.
On Richard Linklater at 65a durational filmmaker still cranking
Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood 2022
The rotoscope-animated memory piece, part of a very productive recent run: this, then Hit Man, then Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon in the same year.
Hit Man 2023
Last year's Netflix film, another entry in Linklater's late-career streak. He's made 20-plus movies and, per Sean, is killing it.
Boyhood 2014
The reference point for his durational projects, now extended to Merrily We Roll Along, filming with Paul Mescal and Ben Platt through 2040.
The Best Actor racehandicapping a crowded year for Hawke
Blue Moon 2025
Ethan Hawke. Variety's Clayton Davis had him No. 1 in late September; Sean doesn't think he's in pole position but hopes for a nomination and would love the Gold Derby fifth-place slot to hold.
One Battle After Another 2025
Leonardo DiCaprio, whom both treat as a near-lock.
Marty Supreme 2025
Timothée Chalamet, another of the names they see as close to guaranteed.
The Secret Agent 2025
Wagner Moura, in the guaranteed tier for both, though neither has seen it yet.
Sinners 2025
Michael B. Jordan, the fourth of their locks.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere 2025
Jeremy Allen White, in the Variety top ten; Amanda can't believe they're still doing this.
Rental Family 2025
Brendan Fraser, on the list, unseen by either host.
The Smashing Machine 2025
Dwayne Johnson, ranked in both the Variety and AwardsWatch lists they read out.
Bugonia 2025
Jesse Plemons in the Best Actor conversation; Sean also flags Emma Stone as a standout in it.
Jay Kelly 2025
George Clooney, holding the No. 10 slot on the Variety list.
Nuremberg 2025
Russell Crowe, one of the lower-tier names, and a title bound for their upcoming ten-movies catch-up episode.
Kiss of the Spider Woman 2025
Raised in the trailer-reel rundown; a pass for Amanda, with respect to Jennifer Lopez.
The Choral 2025
Among the Sony Pictures Classics-style trailers stacked before Sean's Blue Moon screening.
Sirât 2025
Sean is going in blind and asks Amanda to tell him nothing.
Ballad of a Small Player 2025
On Netflix; Sean threw it on and calls it a disappointment.
The Lost Bus 2025
Matthew McConaughey, filed under movies they still mean to get to.
Amanda's Top Five Ethan Hawke Movies
No. 3
Boyhood 2014
No. 3. Not her favorite Linklater, but the clearest study of Hawke over time; divorced-dad energy she's never seen rendered so plainly. Picking up Ellar Coltrane in the muscle car gives her sad chills.
No. 5
Dead Poets Society 1989
No. 5. How she first remembers him, and the openness that runs through everything except his asshole-in-his-20s stretch.
Sean's Top Five Ethan Hawke Movies
No. 1
First Reformed 2017
No. 1. Paul Schrader; a movie Sean says is on the money about how everything feels now, and that he should have fought for in the '25 for 25' rankings. Hawke as another desperate man who's lost hope.
No. 3
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead 2007
No. 3. Sidney Lumet's crime film, Hawke magic opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman as two very different brothers.
No. 5
Training Day 2001
No. 5. Big Hollywood movie star and actor's workout at once; Sean argues Denzel's performance wouldn't land the same opposite a lesser actor.
What makes Ethan Hawke greatthe phases of a career, five years ahead of Sean
Reality Bites 1994
The puppy-dog, cooler-than-cool early Hawke; the register Amanda first fell for.
Hamlet 2000
The modern-dress adaptation where the '90s-into-'00s Hawke pulls all the way back and plays it cool.
Training Day 2001
The 2000s swing back to jitter, a person having a hard time with nothing settled, right on the surface.
Gattaca 1997
Sean's proof that Hawke never disappears into makeup; even in the year 2300 he still looks like Ethan Hawke.
In conversation: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Blue Moon 2025
Kaplow handed Linklater the script around 2012, before Boyhood wrapped; they read it aloud over years whenever all three were in the same city. Hawke describes shifting from the confident tall guy to a five-foot man nobody ever wanted, 'rhythm guitar to violin,' with Linklater nagging the physical transformation until Hawke disappeared. Shot in 15 days off long unbroken takes, the way they learned to work on Tape.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Boyhood 2014
The last time the two shot a film together before Blue Moon, a 10-year gap; also Linklater's model for tracking one actor across time.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Before Sunrise 1995
Hawke's line that there were maybe five fans on earth waiting for a sequel, so a nine-year wait cost nothing; 'the least successful film to ever spawn a sequel.'
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Tape 2001
Their earlier single-location, small-cast film, shot in six days; the training that made Blue Moon's long takes possible.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Me and Orson Welles 2008
Based on Robert Kaplow's novel, though Kaplow didn't write that screenplay; Blue Moon is his first.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
The Graduate 1967
The Mike Nichols story Hawke tells about why Redford couldn't play the lead, because he'd never known a girl to turn him down, which is exactly the self-loathing Hawke had to reach for as Hart.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
The American Friend 1977
Hawke's last-great pick: Wim Wenders, Robbie Müller's photography he calls stunning, Dennis Hopper, some plot holes he'd have loved to punch up.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
The Story of Adèle H. 1975
Linklater's recent rewatch, still just as beautiful; part of the Truffaut thread that runs under both his new films.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Small Change 1976
The Truffaut film Noah Baumbach recommended to Linklater the day before; 'Truffaut never goes away.'
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
One Battle After Another 2025
The current film both single out, and Hawke's occasion to marvel at DiCaprio's run and at DiCaprio opposite Paul Thomas Anderson's cast.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
Bugonia 2025
Hawke on Emma Stone: 'who is this woman,' great and nonstop.
Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater on
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975
Hawke's boyhood example of art as invitation, not instruction, the chief running into the woods and the mystery he's still turning over.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing Little WomenJay KellySentimental Value
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The LowdownAndorThe WatcherThe Last Movie StarsSense and Sensibility (2008)
Stage / musicals Oklahoma!Merrily We Roll Along
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