Kathy Bates stars as an unhappy wife trying to get her husband's attention in this amusing and moving 1991 screen adaptation of Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. After befriending a lonely old woman (Jessica Tandy), Bates hears the story of a lifelong friendship between two other women (Mary Stuary Masterson and Mary-Louise Parker, seen in flashback) who ...
The eclectic, pell-mell energy of hip-hop maestros Outkast gives a jolt to Idlewild, their first movie as a team (both have acted independent of each other: Andre Benjamin, a.k.a. Andre 3000, has previously appeared in Four Brothers and Be Cool, and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton was in ATL). Young bootlegger Rooster (Patton) and undertaker's son Percival (Benjamin) are best friends ...
Hoodlum, Bill Duke's interesting but flawed blaxploitation take on the classic gangster movie, usefully redresses a balance. It is all too easy to see the criminal underworld of the 1920s as an all-white affair, in which Harlem is an exotic locale where occasionally white gangsters patronise the black performers of the Cotton Club, from which black audiences were specifically barred. Yet ...