Richard Linklater’s wistful “Blue Moon” is a tiny story about enormous heartbreak, writes Moira Macdonald.

“Blue Moon” opens with a man literally singing in the rain, though he’s no Gene Kelly. This sad sack is drunk, stumbling and mumbling through an alley, finally slumping to the ground near a trash can. A humiliating end of the road, for whoever this poor fellow is.

This fall brings not one but two excellent Richard Linklater films. One is set at the dawn of a great career: “Nouvelle Vague,” about Jean-Luc Godard and the birth of the French New Wave.

"Blue Moon," in theaters Friday, tells composer Lorenz Hart's story in a single night in one bar, but its Ethan Hawke shrinking effects are most distracting.