FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

PLOT SUMMARY: A housewife who is unhappy with her life befriends an old lady at a nursing home and is enthralled by the tales she tells of people she used to know.

WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix

JAIMEE’S NOTES: When I saw this movie was on Netflix, I knew immediately this would be my first pick for the best category we have…Jaimee’s Favorites. I watched this movie allllll the time when I was younger because it was always on TV, so I would catch different parts in the movie. I loved this film, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, there is crime, there is female empowerment, there are flashbacks. Everything I love. And I also love Kathy Bates, what a lady. Kathy plays Evelyn Couch, a housewife who is going through a very ho hum phase of life. One day Evelyn goes with her husband, Ed, to visit his aunt in the nursing home. While Evelyn is there, she meets a woman named Ninny. Ninny starts telling her stories about Ruth and Idgie and the evolution of their beautiful friendship. I don’t want to give away any of the stories because they are so great coming from Ninny, but Ruth and Idgie eventually start a cafe together where they make fried green tomatoes! And there is also a very Goodbye Earl type of story….dun dun dun. Meanwhile, Evelyn has been going to these weird classes for women with her friend, Missy…aka Patty Mayonnaise. Evelyn realizes she doesn’t need these classes and keeps going back to see Ninny to hear more of the story. Evelyn also becomes bolder and more confident with Ninny’s insistence and in the spirit of Ruth and Idgie. This is truly a wonderful movie about the lengths you will go to for your friends and they can become your family. A genuine ‘90s classic that I cannot wait for you all to watch!

FARGO

PLOT SUMMARY: Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard’s inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen’s bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.

WHERE TO WATCH: Max

JAIMEE’S NOTES: I think this is the category I’m going to get most excited about every month, classic movies I have never seen. We are starting with a banger. I’ve always wanted to watch this movie and now I want to watch it even more, because I want to watch Fargo, the TV show. I was six years old when this movie was released so it did not come across my tiny desk. Going in, I only knew it took place in Fargo and there was a wood chipper at some point. Away we go! We meet Jerry, a man who lives in Minneapolis with his wife Jean and their son, Scotty. He is on his way to Fargo to meet two criminals, he is giving them a car and money to pretend to kidnap his wife so his father-in-law will pay a ransom. Wow, Jerry, great guy. Also, I don’t think we ever learn why Jerry needs this money so badly. Everyone is soooo Minnesotan in this movie. The accents are deeply Minnesotan. And guess what, Scotty doesn’t care about anything, he just wants to play fucking hockey, like a good little Minnesotan boy. The staged kidnapping takes place and things get super out of hand very quickly. And Jerry is a dumbass through it all, he doesn’t want to call the police and is trying to convince his father-in-law, Wade, to give him the ransom money. He’s just so not good at this. At one point Wade says that Jerry can’t do anything right and I wholeheartedly agree. We also have Marge, a very pregnant police chief, who is investigating the many crimes that take place. And Marge is a badass bitch, also the most polite because Minnesotan. This movie is just basically showcasing how a really dumb and not thought out at all plan breaks down and how Marge puts it all together. And…..yes there is a wood chipper, woof. Overall, what a movie! A good alternate title would be, how Jerry fucks up everyone’s lives. If you can’t tell, Jerry sucks. Seriously though, enjoy Minnesota in 1996, it’s delightful.

ELEMENTAL

PLOT SUMMARY: We follow Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, earth- and air-residents live together.

WHERE TO WATCH: Disney+

JAIMEE’S NOTES: What a way to teach your children about immigration….I guess. I had no idea what this movie was about and never would have guessed this, Disney is really into real life issues these days and not just princesses and animals and toys that come to life. Wild! We have Ember, the child of immigrants, she is….you guessed it a fire element. And boy oh boy does she have a temper, she also works in retail so like, I understand girl, life sucks. Ember is trying to keep her temper in check and be calm and rational enough to run her dad’s store so he can retire. Her mom also like smells love in the back room? Get it mom. Her dad has always told Ember that elements do not mix, yikes. Anyway, one of Ember’s mental breakdowns causes the store’s pipes to burst and we meet city inspector, Wade. Wade gives her some tickets and she does not want her dad to find out so she follows him into the city to see what she can do. Wade’s boss, Gale Cumulus, you can guess what element Gale is, thinks his findings are enough to shut The Fireplace, Ember’s dad’s store, down. Wade takes Ember to a basketball game to try to convince Gale that they can track the source of the leak and help the rest of the town if she forgives the tickets. She gives them until the end of the week. Wade and Ember start to hang out to start their quest but are also starting to like each other of course. Ember’s dad hates Wade. But, Wade’s family is very welcoming to Ember…a little elementist (is that what they would call it?) but they welcome her for the most part. Wade’s family also plays a game where they try not to cry and none of them can do it, so great. Wade is super sweet and forthcoming with his feelings and Ember does like him but is a bit more closed off. Ember and Wade find the leak in the dam and Ember fixes it with glass, seems risky. Ember also really wants to be glassmaker and Wade and his mother are very encouraging but she feels like she can’t do what she wants and must listen to her dad’s wishes about running the store. Ember is having a hard time with her career and relationship because her parents wishes for her are very different then her own, she says she can’t be with Wade, so sad. But guess the fuck what, that dam glass breaks and a flood is coming, not good if you live in the fire part of town. Big yikes all over Ember’s life. At first I thought this movie was pretty predictable, kind of boring. But…at the end, I was locked in. I found myself yelling OMFG no WADE! I will say the elements and the things they could and could not do was a fascinating part of the story. And I will ask myself the question I ask myself after every Disney movie because most of them have this effect on me, did I cry? The answer is….I teared up.

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

PLOT SUMMARY: A family’s getaway to a luxurious rental home takes an ominous turn when a cyberattack knocks out their devices, and two strangers appear at their door.

WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix

JAIMEE’S NOTES: This movie was wild and I don’t know the other words to describe it. But I did really enjoy it. First of all, Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke…great cast. And also, it has a lot of black mirror type mystic to it. Amanda takes her family on a little vacation out of the city to an AirBnb because she is sick of the fucking people. Her family consists of her, her husband Clay, her horny little son Archie, and her daughter Rose who is just in her Friends watching era. Everything is great until one day when they go to the beach and a huge ship runs into the shore. No one knows what is happening. Then their electronics all stop working and they get no cell phone reception. And the biggest disaster, Rose only has the very last episode of Friends left, girl was left on a cliff hanger with Rachel and Ross. Then that night, the owner of the home, G. H. and his daughter, Ruth come because they need somewhere to stay. They have a whole long story and it honestly seems sketch as fuck. They kind of have no proof that it is their home at first and I think they could have done some further checking. Kind of like the beginning of a scary movie but we aren’t really headed there….unfortunately. And in the morning, weird stuff just keeps on happening. Deer are all over the place, planes are crashing, self-driving cars are self driving into each other. It’s a wild world out there, so many unanswered questions. Are they going to figure out what the hell is going on? Are they going to be okay? And most importantly, will Rose ever finish Friends!?

ESCAPING TWIN FLAMES

PLOT SUMMARY: This documentary explores the story of Jeff and Shaleia Divine, the leaders of Twin Flames Universe who sell online classes that guarantee harmonious union with your destined partner, a controversial online community that preys on people looking for love.

WHERE TO WATCH: Netflix

JAIMEE’S NOTES: If you know me then you know one of my favorite things to research is cults. They are fascinating to me. And this one is a real doozy. Is this technically a three episode series and not a movie? Yes. Do I care? No, I do not. Cult time! The number one piece of advice I learned from this documentary is to never google the phrase twin flames, that is oddly how so many people got involved in this cult. Jeff and Megan or as they sometimes like to be called, Ender and Shaleia, built their little cult by taking advantage of vulnerable, heartbroken people. They basically say that if people pay them, they can attend these little coaching sessions and groups and they are guaranteed to meet the love of their life, AKA their twin flame. In the beginning, Jeff and Shaleia would tell lots of the members to look at their exes or people that are already in their life and they could just tell who their twin flame was from that, I guess? There was one lady who’s ex-boyfriend got a restraining order against her and Jeff and Shaleia basically told her that it wasn’t real and boundaries aren’t real either. Guess what…it was real. You are probably thinking, that doesn’t really sound like a cult, it sounds like a scam. But also Jeff and Shaleia would isolate these people and have them cut off ties with their families. They said their “soul family” is their real family. One woman, Paula, and her mother are trying to get back in contact with her twin sister, Steph throughout the whole documentary because she sent them a letter basically telling them to fuck off. Well of course, as cults and scams go, Jeff wanted more money so he kind of invented a twin flames universe. There was counseling and a meal program and they also brought in religion so they didn’t have to pay taxes. He wanted to make the most money possible while paying the least amount of taxes possible. Jeff is a huge asshole who gets mad if he is questioned or things don’t go his way, he files a lot of lawsuits. Later on in the twin flames cult, Jeff and Shaleia said they got a vision or whatever they call it and they saw more twin flames. They also made up a new rule that everyone’s twin flame would be in this group already, no outsiders. This created a problem because there were mostly women left in the group. So Jeff and Shaleia just released their twin flame list and said who had a masculine energy and who had a feminine energy and lots of the people that were paired were straight women. A lot of these women really took what Jeff and Shaleia said to heart and some even got transgender surgeries and/or got married to their partner they were told about. There are so many more little crazy things Jeff and Shaleia did and it’s wild that seemingly everything so far that the police know about is legal. There are a few past members who are trying to get their lives back in order and they are working really hard to bring the twin flames universe down. I hope they do! And I hope all the family members are reunited with their children and siblings. There were some facts at the end and one that stood out to me was that there are currently 10,000 active cults in the United States. That is insane to me and also sad. Let’s expose them all, cult researchers!