The Momma’s Boy Movie Pantheon

Steven Spielberg has mommy issues—in the most emotionally rich ways. From E.T. to A.I., Blockbuster Boy No. 1 has mined the bittersweet relationships between mothers and sons who don’t always know how to get along, don’t know how to talk about it, but are endlessly bound all the same, reportedly inspired by his own family life. The Fabelmans, a late-career masterpiece, sees the director loosely mine his own childhood in an uncharacteristically earthbound fashion. It weaves interlocking stories about Spielberg stand-in Sammy’s (Gabriel LaBelle) burgeoning passion for filmmaking and the family drama in which he becomes both witness and documenter. The highlight (well, other than the late David Lynch doing a hilarious John Ford impression) is one of Michelle Williams’s richest performances, finding the tension of a mom who holds secrets but never wants less than the world for her son (and his beloved camera).

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The title really does say it all: Albert Brooks’s standout Mother is a sweet but acerbic reckoning between successful sci-fi writer John Henderson (Brooks) and his mom (a poignant Debbie Reynolds, returning from a long Hollywood hiatus), after he moves in with her following yet another divorce. This is Brooks at his neurotic, flat-out hilarious, but emotionally weighty best.

BONUS DOUBLE B

ILL: Sure, it’s a thriller, but don’t miss out on the other Mother (2009), South Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho’s (Parasite) most underrated film by a mile, about a mom with fire in her belly out to free her mentally disabled son of wrongful murder charges. Simply put, Hitchcock wishes he made this one.

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If you haven’t heard of The Guilt Trip, it’s because it never really got the audience it deserved. Directed by Anne Fletcher (Step Up, The Proposal) with a script by Dan Fogelman (Cars, Crazy, Stupid, Love), it may follow familiar story beats—i.e., it’s definitely lifting some inspiration from Brooks’s Mother. But the chemistry between Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand is a sheer delight. and it’s actually hard to imagine that they’re not actually the awkward scientist son and overbearing but well-meaning mother they’re portraying in the film. On a rollicking road trip, they discover what both of them don’t know about buried romantic issues and one another. The one and only Babs reminds you why she’s an immortal screen presence all over again.

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Director Mike Mills (Beginners) is one of our most gifted observers of the fault lines (and genuinely fun times!) in families. Set in 1979 and partly inspired by Mills’s childhood, 20th Century Women follows a 15-year-old living in Santa Barbara with his actual mom and a ramshackle surrogate family of sorts. Hippieness, sexual awakening, heartbreak, and feminist teachings ensue, brought to vivid life by a stacked cast (Annette Bening, Lucas Jade Zumann, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup). Where the hell is Bening’s Oscar already?

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Sure, you heard about the seemingly impossible feat of Richard Linklater sporadically shooting his coming-of-age drama Boyhood over 11 years. The technical achievement, not to mention all that Hollywood wrangling, is astonishing. But stay for a sharply realistic tale of, yes, a boy aging from 6 to 18 in Texas and shouldering the weight of deeply flawed, frazzled, but kind of fabulous divorced parents and coming out the other side. As the parents, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, aging in real time, are perfect.

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Transamerica is a mom-son movie not like those other mom-son movies. Which is to say, the Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated indie is about a trans woman (Felicity Huffman) who reunites with a long-lost troublemaker of a son she didn’t even know about (Kevin Zegers), who is looking to connect with the dad who was never there. Huffman is a force of nature.

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One of the highlights of mainstream black ‘90s cinema, Soul Food is a crowd-pleaser to end all crowd-pleasers, exploring an extended Chicago family that regularly gets together for rib-sticking dinner, with plenty of love and complications layered in every conversation. Don’t worry, Mom will appreciate the climactic uplift. And who can really say no to legends like Vivica A. Fox, Vanessa L. Williams, Nia Long, Mekhi Phifer, and “Big Mama” herself, Irma P. Hall?

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The best Christmas movie? No, but The Family Stone’s generous heart and funny bone sneak up on you. At its core is a fierce, funny mamma (Diane Keaton doing top-level Diane Keaton) to a clan of mostly boys, one of whom (Dermot Mulroney) mistakenly brings home his ridiculously uptight girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker, doing top-level bitchy Sarah Jessica Parker). This doubles as a great cozy movie night date with the special lady in your life who is, by God, not your mom.

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The French know their way around a shaky family dynamic. And they don’t come much better than Kings & Queen, which if you can get into subtitles (yes, you can), is a punchy, accessible drama with something for everyone. The plot sprawls. There’s a twice-divorced mom to a son with autism whose father is dead, a troubled new relationship with a man, a former lover, a sick father. If it sounds exhausting, it’s the opposite, powerfully tying up its many threads in ways you would never expect. Oh, and there are a lot of very sexy French people.

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You could argue Pedro Almodóvar, cinema’s king of female muses, has never made a better movie than All About My Mother, about a mother of a son who is killed in a car accident and must persist with all her might because… well, what else can she do? But the vibrancy of Almodovar’s writing and direction, the nuanced understanding of how pain and joy can coincide, makes it a life-affirming salve.

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Did you know Martin Scorsese directed a movie centered entirely on a woman? Oh, did he ever, and it’s a blast. Slapstick and sorrowful in equal measure, it stars Ellen Burstyn as a down-on-her-luck widow who, alongside her preteen son, searches across the American Southwest for a better life. The scenes set in a diner where she takes up waitressing work were so charming that they spawned a long-running sitcom, Alice. (If you don’t know, ask your mom.)

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True to its title, Beau Is Afraid is not exactly a heartwarming affair, but it’s hard to deny its visceral power. Directed by Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar), the three-hour film follows Joaquin Phoenix as an emotionally damaged man with a truckload of mommy issues who travels to see said mom (Patti LuPone, fantastic as always). There’s very little catharsis here, but there are: Nathan Lane, Richard Kind, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Amy Ryan, Bill Hader, Parker Posey—you won’t come away complaining about the immense talent. And if your mom has nerves of steel, it’s worth a watch.

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Okay, so Mrs. Robinson isn’t exactly the mother to Dustin Hoffman’s listless Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate but she does teach a young man … some things. And she’s much more than a bombshell. Don’t take it from me. As Roger Ebert once controversially wrote of the classic and, yes, very funny comedy, “The only character in the movie who is alive—who can see through situations, understand motives and dare to seek her own happiness—is Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Seen today, The Graduate is a movie about a young man of limited interest, who gets a chance to sleep with the ranking babe in his neighborhood, and throws it away in order to marry her dorky daughter.” Justice for Bancroft, justice for Mrs. Robinson!

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