Becoming All-American

Most of the year’s Oscar movies are fairly typical of the new trend to reduce art to ideology, some more concerned with race (Sinners, a mediocre picture that now holds the record for most nominations in Oscar history), some more with feminism (Hamnet, perhaps even Bugonia), and some combining the two (One Battle After Another). But an older kind of Oscar picture somehow snuck in: Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, one half of the incredibly famous and successful Broadway duo Rodgers & Hart.