My 12 Movies Challenge August movie was 1991’s “Fried Green Tomatoes,” which my friend Donna recommended.

“Fried Green Tomatoes,” directed by Jon Avnet and based on Fannie Flagg’s 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, feels like something of a Southern rite of passage – maybe more so for women than men – but it feels like this type of movie that is beloved by Southern women everywhere and having been raised by a Southern woman something I probably should have seen at some point, but never had.

I’m glad Donna recommended it. It may not be as big of a Southern rite of passage as another similar film recommended to me earlier this year, “To Kill a Mockingbird, but it’s the kind of simple, tugging-at-your-heartstrings movie you don’t see enough from cinema these days. We mustn’t lose these slice-of-life stories.

The movie opens in modern-day (1991) Alabama with a middle-aged, unhappy, and unfulfilled housewife, Evelyn (Kathy Bates), visiting her husband's sick aunt at a nursing home and developing a friendship with an older woman, Ninny (Jessica Tandy), living at the facility. The friendship between the two blossoms with a story of another friendship, one in the past, and the mark it left on Ninny.

It's incredible that at the time of the film’s release, Bates and Tandy were the two most recent Best Actress Oscar winners, Bates for “Misery” and Tandy for “Driving Miss Daisy.” How much of a coup it must have been for the producers of this film to score that casting, even though I’m not sure if Bates would’ve been crowned an Oscar winner at the time of casting/filming.

While Bates and Tandy are the reason for the retelling of this story from the past, it is the flashbacks, which, from my point of view, seemed to make up most of the film; I found myself getting lost in more.

This friendship between Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker), born out of tragedy, is a remarkable kinship that is undoubtedly aided by the undertones of homoeroticism between the two. This is a love story between friends on its surface but could easily be viewed as something deeper. The intent seems to be a more profound love than simply best friends. I wonder how many realized this in 1991, and how many realize this now?

“Fried Green Tomatoes” is a story and performance film – the kind I find myself returning to as a favorite. All of the glory is in Flagg’s script, which was nominated for an Oscar, and the performances by the cast – most importantly Bates, Tandy, Masterson and Parker.

It’s a lovely film that will make you feel.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue & Saleka Shymalan 
Rated: PG-13 (some violent content & brief strong language)
Runtime: 1 hour & 45 minutes

​I once had a literature professor who'd also served as the mayor of the small town in which I attended community college. Besides the lessons on William Blake, I don't remember much from the class, but of the many anecdotes the professor told, the one I am reminded of most was about how, when he was mayor, a detective met him at city hall and commented on how he knew he was neither a corrupt politician nor serial killer because his office was so unorganized. Please understand this was in 2006, so before “Dexter” premiered, and before my Friday nights consisted of consuming episodes of “48 Hours” as a way to decompress. That is to say, this felt like such an insight at the time. The professor would go on to note how the detective told him a favorable statistic showing that more often than not these people in positions of great risk were obsessive about the state of the world they crafted not only so they had the right boxes checked should said world ever be questioned but because psychologically their impulses wouldn't let them operate in any other way. And so, while the overly obsessive, neat freak of a serial killer is a somewhat tired trope in 2024, M. Night Shyamalan's “Trap” utilizes it to great effect in the most Shyamalan of ways by clearly telegraphing the film's themes and intentions almost immediately while at the same time possessing something of an unidentifiable spirit that both suggests and reassures to inquiring viewers that there's more going on than meets the eye. 

What's great about “Trap” is its seeming disregard for harboring any notion that it needs to sport a signature Shyamalan twist. Given the trailers there was something of an expectation that there might be more to the set-up and there is, to a certain extent, but it puts all of its cards on the table early with the appeal of the film largely resting on this brilliant, four-quadrant set-up. Sure, the movie is also something of a soft launch for Shyamalan's daughter's music career, but this is largely "The Josh Hartnett Show" and with the pre-release narratives established around not only Hartnett's comeback but the buzzy premise and the hope the director might deliver a late-summer surprise all indicators pointed to “Trap” being a major touchpoint in pop culture this year even if it ended up as one of M. Night's more minor works. Fortunately, “Trap” is more interesting because of how it unfolds rather than only because of what happens in the final moments which, while likely disappointing for some, will seemingly ensure the enduring qualities of the movie as a whole for much longer than if Shyamalan were solely banking on a build-up and reveal. As stated in the marketing, this is an experience through and through, an experience that represents the writer/director crafting what is almost the antithesis of what we've come to expect from him in that as far as instead of looking for clues to piece together a puzzle we're simply looking for the next logical step that might allow both us and Hartnett's killer to escape for a little longer.

After two rather heady explorations concerning time and intolerance with his last two features, it seems Shyamalan's biggest goal with “Trap” was to have some fun with the cat-and-mouse thriller. Granted, that doesn't mean switching lanes completely, but rather, the writer/director leans into his trademark touches even more so than usual, making aspects like his plain and unaffected dialogue funnier than usual while the building of suspense and setting of tone ratchets up both the dread and tension in these heightened circumstances. While sure to catch some off-guard, the comedy here is not at all unintentional (just peep Kid Cudi's character), but what is maybe most impressive is Shyamalan's ability to keep the balance of comedy and tension in check enough that much of it translates to an uncomfortable unease throughout; we chuckle to relieve some of the pressure of the situation. Said situation is presented bluntly in terms of the facts of it all: a seemingly average dad, Cooper (Hartnett), is taking his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a "Lady Raven" concert, the performer portrayed by Saleka Shyamalan in an unabashed attempt to showcase her musical talent (Lil' Shyamalan wrote many of the songs performed in the film). The hook is that Cooper is not an average, middle-aged dad and that the concert is much more than just an additional afternoon show scheduled on a whim because of demand. Cooper is a serial killer known as "The Butcher" and the concert is an elaborate ruse to ... you guessed it ... trap the killer and bring him to justice. That's so Raven.

Of course, the set-up is deceptive in its simplicity, for as soon as we enter this world, Shyamalan can't help but draw larger themes from the material. For starters, the setting of a concert, a place where hundreds of thousands of people gather at the same time for what we assume is the same purpose despite the odds that at least one, if not multiple undoubtedly land on the crazy side is a legitimately scary thought when stopping to consider the possibilities (and probabilities). Our fascination with serial killers and what provokes these monstrous tendencies folds into this idea of how easy it is to conceive of one of them being among the 30,000 people attending a concert. Add to the already mounting layers that this serial killer has a daughter where his love for her feels authentic despite knowing in the back of his mind that one day this will have to end and she will see him for who he truly is - the movie begs the question, "How can someone so mournful about what they’ll miss take as much away from others so easily?" Add onto this yet another layer when you consider Shyamalan has cast his own daughter in the film, the first of two daughters who have elected to follow in his footsteps (Ishana directed “The Watchers” released earlier this summer), in a movie about a dad with mommy issues who is trying to “never let the two lives touch" yet can't prevent them from bleeding into one another. Has Shyamalan himself given into this ideology when it comes to mixing work and his personal life or is he simply taking this opportunity to help his daughter with her career as a way to evaluate and make peace with his own feelings about the kind of father he's been? That the writer/director somehow injects this amount of substantive material into a movie where Hartnett is ostensibly a cringy dad whose fight or flight conflict increases with each sequence is the film's greatest accomplishment, even if you come away wondering about some of the specifics of Hartnett's "flight" tactics.

Whether Shyamalan was baking as much into “Trap” or I'm just projecting is a valid question, and even though it would have been preferable had the entirety of the movie played out from within the concert arena - the screenplay makes some of its most interesting statements through its least plausible act, the final one. Reminiscent of those fugitive-on-the-run movies where they have to outsmart the authorities, the way in which Hartnett's Cooper outsmarts those who are chasing him, namely an FBI profiler played by Hayley Mills (yes, that Hayley Mills), strains credulity the longer the film goes on (and it admittedly overstays its welcome) but through the sheer will of Hartnett's unhinged but very calculated - a neat freak, overly obsessive killer would never allow themselves to go fully deranged - performance we become privy to the aforementioned inner-conflict that has been building in The Butcher since realizing this could very well be the end of the line for him. 

The first three-quarters of the film is all about the chase as well as some politics of parenting involving key decisions about when you introduce smartphones and all of their capabilities to your child as well as navigating disagreements in the friend group both as a parent to your own child as well as a parent in league with your child's friend's parents but while these are nice tidbits of truth that lend Hartnett and his daughter's connection more dimensions it is in the final act where Hartnett is forced to confront his demons in the presence of his family that we get to the good stuff in terms of the larger themes. Shyamalan often goes to a shot in the film where Hartnett is framed so we only see half his face and this likely represents something along the lines of how the character has only ever presented half of who he truly is for the majority of his life, but maybe this is also the issue with the film overall in that it is two halves of the same line of thought unable to reconcile one aspect with the other. The cat and mouse thriller is fun and intense, while the negotiations between The Butcher and Lady Raven are insightful and interesting. However, while complementary in many ways, there is never a cohesion that melds symbolism and reason in a truly impactful fashion. It is a hell of a lot of fun, though, and for a movie whose climactic scene reaches a literal boiling point - maybe that is what it was mostly meant to do. 

Director: Shawn Levy
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman & Emma Corrin
Rated: R (strong bloody violence, language, gore & sexual references)
Runtime: 2 hours & 8 minutes