Nancy Moore Atchison Movies

This moving made-for-TV movie is a faithful rendition of Marjorie Kinan Rawling's timeless coming-of-age tale in which a boy living a hardscrabble life with his family in a Florida swamp must grow-up and face his responsibilities after he befriends an orphaned fawn. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Jack Travers (Will Patton) has a news career that is going nowhere, and he has been all over the place trying to make it come alive. Only recently has he come back to the town where his wife and daughter live. At the same time, the charming and handsome nineteen-year old Darryl Weston (Michael DeLuise) coolly murdered his whole family. Now that the boy is in prison and his case has made all the hot news headlines it's going to, Jack gets a chance to interview him in prison. With luck, he can make the killer into a media star and ride his notoriety to the top - or at least until the killer is executed. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A woman learns the value of friendship as she hears the story of two women and how their friendship shaped their lives in this warm comedy-drama. Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) is an emotionally repressed housewife with a habit of drowning her sorrows in candy bars. Her husband Ed (Gailard Sartain) barely acknowledges her existence, and while he visits his aunt at a nursing home every week, Evelyn is not permitted to come into the room because the old women doesn't like her. One week, while waiting out Ed's visit, Evelyn meets Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), a frail but feisty old woman who lives at the same nursing home and loves to tell stories. Over the span of several weeks, she spins a whopper about one of her relatives, Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson). Back in the 1920s, Idgie was a sweet but fiercely independent woman with her own way of doing things who ran the town diner in Whistle Stop, Alabama. Idgie was very close to her brother Buddy (Chris O'Donnell), and when he died, she wouldn't talk to anyone except Buddy's girl, Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker). Idgie gave Ruth a job at the cafe after she left her abusive husband, Frank Bennett (Nick Searcy). Between her habit of standing up for herself, standing up to Frank, and serving food to Black people out the back of the diner, Idgie raised the ire of the less tolerant citizens of Whistle Stop, and when Frank mysteriously disappeared, many locals suspected that Idgie, Ruth, and their friends may have been responsible. Evelyn finds herself looking forward to her weekly visits with Ninny, and is inspired by her story to take a new pride in herself and assert her independence from Ed. Fried Green Tomatoes was based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by actress-turned-author Fannie Flagg, who makes a cameo appearance as the leader of a self-help group. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Long Walk Home is a recreation of a troubled era in American history. The time is 1955; the place, Montgomery, Alabama. When Rosa Parks, an African American woman, is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, it is the first volley in the great Bus Boycott, organized by Dr. Martin Luther King in order to desegregate the Birmingham transportation system. The boycott is a decided inconvenience for Miriam Thompson (Sissy Spacek), a well-to-do white woman. Now, Miriam must drive to the black section of town to pick up her maid Odessa Cotter (Whoopi Goldberg) and bring her to work. Outside of her own social circle, Miriam realizes for the first time just how privileged, sheltered and self-centered her life has been. What brings this fact home is the realization that Odessa has literally been raising two families: the Thompsons' and her own. Odessa has also sacrificed her own health and wellbeing to serve her employers without question or complaint. Awakened to the true inequities of "Separate But Equal", and impressed by Dr. King's edict of nonviolent resistance, Miriam joins the boycott. This stirs up the racist feelings harbored by Miriam's husband Norman (Dwight Schultz), who at the behest of his goonish brother Tunker (Dylan Baker) joins the Klanlike White Citizen's Council. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi