Tag: Chloe Zhao

Movie of the Week: ‘The Rider’

Jeff Mitchell

With writer/director Chloe Zhao winning Golden Globe Best Director and Best Picture honors on Feb. 28, AHFW wanted to feature her heartfelt 2017 feature “The Rider” as our Movie of the Week. “The Rider” (2017) – “Sometimes, dreams aren’t meant to be.” Writer/director Chloe Zhao’s beautiful but heartbreaking picture tenderly embraces this aforementioned resignation in the world of rodeo riding.  Brady Jandreau, a real-life rodeo rider suffered a brain injury on the circuit, and he plays Brady Blackburn, who suffers the same fate.  Brady’s doctors forbid him to get on…

‘Nomadland’: A haunting, heartbreaking, all-too-true American story

Jeff Mitchell

“Nomadland” – “I need work.  I like work.” – Fern (Frances McDormand) For years and years, Fern and her husband Bo worked at U.S. Gypsum in Empire, Nev.  In business for 88 years at that location, the company manufactured sheetrock, but due to demand shortfalls, U.S. Gypsum closed the Empire plant in 2011.  Since the corporation dominated employment opportunities in this tiny, western municipality (that sits about 100 miles north of Reno and 40 miles southwest of Black Rock City), it instantly became a ghost town.  In fact, these days…