NYFF: "The Rider"

by John Guerin

One of the more exciting breakouts from this year's festival circuit is Chloe Zhao’s elegiac equine drama The Rider. This wistful blend of documentary and poetic realism follows Brady Jandreau — a 20-year-old horse trainer who suffers a near-fatal head injury that stunts any chance of his continuing an impressive rodeo career. Suffused with a melancholic color palette and somber score, The Rider makes palpable the dashed dreams of our young protagonist, charting the reverberations of his accident and their implications with impressive and authentic skill... 

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i know all there is to know about the linking game... 🎵

Your host (c'est moi, Nathaniel) is weeks behind his movie game. So here's part 1 of a massive link roundup to try to catch up. Twenty-five mini stories in this one, let's go...

EW celebrates Idris Elba on their cover
The Vulture a profile of the screenwriter of The Post who was inspired to write it after reading Katherine Graham's memoir "Personal History" Meryl Streep will play Graham in the film (which is not based on that memoir but on one event in Graham's career.)
Awards Daily laments that big box office hits like Get Out and Wonder Woman are not considers shoo-in for Best Picture nominations
Variety Darren Aronofsky tapped as keynote speaker for next spring's SXSW festival
The Hollywood Reporter Disney is not moving forward with its Jack and the Beanstalk animated film named Gigantic
Playbill Glee's Lea Michele finally met Barbra Streisand
People Dan Amboyer who plays the twin of Hilary Duff's deceased fiance on Younger (long story) has come out as gay
Mirror Rob Collier believes his gay under-butler role on Downton Abbey has made it difficult for him to find other roles

More after the jump including  Weinstein harassment fallout, agressive Netflix recommendations, Jonathan Groff's penchant for singing on set, and more...

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NYFF: Arthur Miller: Writer

By Manuel Betancourt

There may not be a more towering figure of the American stage than Arthur Miller. From A View from the Bridge and Death of a Salesman to The Crucible and The Price, his plays remain some of the most performed / discussed / dissected dramas of the twentieth century. Capturing men (for they were so often men) caught adrift in an ever-changing world, Miller’s protagonists laid bare the most insidious aspects of American society. 12 years after his death, Arthur Miller: Writer (a riff on what he once said he hoped his obituary would read like), comes to offer a humanizing portrait of the New York City-born dramatist. That it comes courtesy of his daughter, Rebecca (yes, Mrs Day-Lewis, The Meyerowitz Stories’ bit part player, and Maggie’s Plan helmer) means that there’s a level of access and intimacy that we may not otherwise have gotten... 

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Review: The Mountain Between Us

by Eric Blume

I know what you’re thinking:  you’ve watched the trailer for The Mountain Between Us, the new movie where Kate Winslet and Idris Elba are stranded in the mountains together after a plane crash.  And since you’re a smart moviegoer, you probably thought, 'okay the trailer looks a little bit terrible, but it’s Kate!  And Idris!  They’re so sexy and talented!  Surely the movie itself can’t be that bad?'

I’m sad to report, it truly is...

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NYFF: BPM (Beats Per Minute)

by Jason Adams

The setting is a classroom; the conversations academic. Several cliques gather, piled high in the bleacher seating - they snap their approval and hiss their diss while sending flirty glances and fully enunciated lip smacks to the cute boys a row or two over. BPM (Beats Per Minute) is in its own way a High School Movie - everyone is young and they go to dances and they go on field trips (to actual schools, even) and harangue their teachers.

Of course everyone is young because they're all dying young and they go to dances to forget they're all dying and their field trips are to splash blood on the walls of the pharmaceutical companies keeping them sick, so it's a different kind of High School Movie. Mean Girls it ain't.

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