The Top Ten Mother's Day Films of All Time, Ranked

Top ten Mother's Day films, ranked

Every holiday collects its own shelf of movies, and Mother's Day is a harder one to fill than most. Plenty of films have mothers in them. Fewer are actually about being one, with the exhaustion, the guilt and the fierce loyalty that come with it. The ten films below do that job from different angles, across comedy, drama, horror and a few titles that sit somewhere in between.

The rules for this ranking are simple. Television films are out, a short film may sneak in, and the mother has to be central to the story, not a supporting presence. Quality counts, but so does how truthfully a film treats the relationship. That is why a 1996 comedy about a grown man moving back in with his mother lands above an Oscar winner.

The list runs from tenth place to first, in three groups, and each group follows a loose logic. The early entries are the ones where motherhood shares the screen with another story. The middle of the list holds the heavyweights and the one real horror film. The top three are the films that stay on the mother from the first scene to the last. A table after the entries gives the year, director and central mother for each film, so readers planning a Mother's Day watch can compare at a glance.

Ten to seven: mothers in the margins and in the middle

Jerry Maguire (1996) opens the list because its heart is two mothers, even though Tom Cruise gets the poster. Renee Zellweger plays Dorothy Boyd, a single mother whose whole life is her son Ray, played by Jonathan Lipnicki, and Regina King plays Marcee Tidwell, a wife who keeps her family steady while her husband Rod, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., fights for a contract. Both actresses went on to win Oscars later, Zellweger for Cold Mountain and King for If Beale Street Could Talk. The best scene is the one where Marcee brings Rod back to himself in the middle of a bad negotiation.

The Kids Are All Right (2010), directed by Lisa Cholodenko, follows a married couple, played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, whose teenage children contact the sperm donor behind their birth, played by Mark Ruffalo. The family strains under the weight of that decision, and the film refuses to make anyone a villain. A dinner scene in which Bening's Nic questions Paul about school is the one most parents recognize at once.

The Joy Luck Club (1993), directed by Wayne Wang from Amy Tan's novel, tells the stories of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. It is a hard film to watch dry-eyed. The key scene comes when June, played by Ming-Na Wen, confesses to her mother Suyuan, played by Kieu Chinh, that she feels she has fallen short of her expectations, and learns what her mother really thought.

Postcards From the Edge (1990) comes out of Carrie Fisher's own writing, adapted by Fisher from her novel and directed by Mike Nichols. Meryl Streep plays Suzanne Vale, an actress leaving rehab, and Shirley MacLaine plays her mother Doris, who treats her like a child. It sits beside Terms of Endearment as a darker sibling, and its best moments are the arguments in which both women are right and neither backs down.

Six to four: the heavyweights and the horror

Terms of Endearment (1983) was directed by James L. Brooks and won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress for MacLaine. She plays Aurora Greenway, a controlling mother who clashes with her daughter Emma, played by Debra Winger, for decades. Emma marries Flap Horton, played by Jeff Daniels, and her life gets harder from there. The hospital scene in which Aurora demands that a nurse give her dying daughter her medication on time is the reason MacLaine won.

The Babadook (2014) is the list's horror entry and the debut feature of its director, Jennifer Kent. It stars Essie Davis as Amelia, a widow raising her six-year-old son Samuel, played by Noah Wiseman, alone. A mysterious pop-up book about a figure in a top hat enters the house, and the creature may be real or may be Amelia's grief and exhaustion given a shape. The scene in which Amelia confronts the Babadook speaks for itself.

Juno (2007) puts a sixteen-year-old at the center of one of the best-known pregnancy movies of the 2000s. Directed by Jason Reitman, it stars Ellen Page, who now works as Elliot Page, as a teenager who becomes pregnant by a friend, played by Michael Cera. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney play her supportive parents, and Diablo Cody won the Oscar for the screenplay. Juno decides to place the baby with an adoptive mother, and the film's real subject is how much responsibility a teenager can carry at once.

Three to one: the comedy, the classic and the winner

Baby Boom (1987), directed by Charles Shyer, gives Diane Keaton the role of J.C. Wiatt, a Manhattan executive who inherits a baby girl and watches her career unravel. It is a comedy on the surface and a sharp portrait of working motherhood underneath, and the sequence in which Wiatt discovers that the Vermont house she bought has no water left is the film at its funniest.

Auntie Mame (1958), directed by Morton DaCosta and based on Patrick Dennis's novel, stars Rosalind Russell as the eccentric aunt who takes in her orphaned nephew. Russell was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, and her line that life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death is still the film's calling card. Mame becomes a mother by tucking the boy in on his first night, and the later confrontation with the grown Patrick is the emotional peak.

Mother (1996) takes first place. Albert Brooks wrote, directed and stars as John Henderson, a science fiction writer who decides after his second divorce that the cause of his failed relationships may be his mother, and moves back in to run an experiment. Debbie Reynolds plays Beatrice, a woman who has accepted her own limits and has opinions on everything from his laundry to the contents of her fridge. Nothing in it is exaggerated. The late-night snack scene from his first evening back is the one to start with.

The ten films at a glance

More pregnancy movies to watch with the list

Juno is the clearest pregnancy movie in the top ten, and Baby Boom and The Kids Are All Right deal with babies and conception from the side. For a Mother's Day watch that stays on pregnancy itself, four more films are worth adding:

• Juno (2007): the ranked entry above, and the best place to start for a pregnancy comedy with real feeling.
• Waitress (2007): written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, with Keri Russell as a pie maker in a small town who becomes pregnant by accident.
• Knocked Up (2007): Judd Apatow's comedy about an unplanned pregnancy after a one-night stand, with Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen.
• Rosemary's Baby (1968): Roman Polanski's horror film with Mia Farrow, for readers who want the dark side of pregnancy movies and do not mind being unsettled.

The verdict: why Mother beats the Oscar winners

A ranking of Mother's Day films invites an easy answer, and the easy answer is Terms of Endearment. It is a great film and a monument of the genre. But Mother does something harder. It treats a mother as an ordinary person with habits, grudges and a refrigerator full of the wrong things, and it lets her son discover that this is the whole point. That recognition is what the holiday is about.

The ranking also says something about what Mother's Day films do well. The best ones refuse to flatter their subject. Aurora in Terms of Endearment is domineering, Doris in Postcards From the Edge is controlling, Amelia in The Babadook is close to breaking and Mame is irresponsible by any normal measure. Each is still the person who shows up, and that gap between flawed and devoted is the territory these films share.

Several films were left just outside the ten. Bao (2018), Pixar's short about a Chinese mother in Canada whose steamed bun comes to life, would be on any list that allows shorts. Aliens (1986) has Sigourney Weaver protecting a young survivor as a surrogate mother, and it is an unusual holiday pick for exactly that reason. Psycho (1960) is a study of a controlling mother whose hold on her son, played by Anthony Perkins, never ends. As Good as It Gets (1997) and One Fine Day (1996) both have strong parent-child material, but the mother is not the center of either one.

For a Mother's Day pick that will work on the day itself, the choice is easy: Mother for a comedy that feels true, Terms of Endearment for a night of crying, and Juno or Waitress when the conversation turns to pregnancy movies. The Babadook is an unforgettable film, but it is a poor gift for an easily scared audience.

Sources

• Mother (1996 film), Wikipedia — Checked against: director, cast and release year of the top-ranked film.