What better time to post about what I did for Mother's Day than Father's Day (and not even on time for Father's Day, even)? Anyway, my mom asked me to make her a list of film recommendations for Mother's Day with the only guidelines being "films I haven't seen before." That was unhelpfully broad, so I recommended her some films I like that seemed to be out of her wheelhouse. I also included some short write-ups on the movies and what I'd like for her to take away from each one. It was a lot of fun work and I thought I'd share it, so it's below the break:


Mother’s Day Film Recommendations

Happy Mother’s Day!

So you asked for film recommendations from me, specifically “films you think I should watch'' and “films I haven’t seen.” That’s…broad! And I’m not exactly sure what films you have or haven’t seen, so I might give you something you’ve seen before. I’m also not an amazing film historian or anything and have some notable gaps (pre 1980’s films, non-American films, black film, and a lot of the “important” touchstones) so this isn’t comprehensive. Also, most of these aren’t motherly films, like, I didn’t really
choose films about moms or motherhood. Either way, I’ve tried to compile a list of 7 movies that are interesting or important formally, culturally, sub-culturally, or narratively.

I should also say that you and I have pretty different tastes, and I’m more open to certain topics and subjects. I’ve included a pretty detailed description of any content-sensitive material. I’ve also included Chicken Exits! Remember Chicken Exits, the mid-line exits that you had to take me through for amusement park rides? I’ve selected movies that are like those! They’re tamer (or at least tamer to my taste) movies that still touch on the same or similar material. So it’s really 14 movies.

Anyway, that’s enough whinging, on with the list!

Film 1: The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971)

(dir. by Howard Alk)
Runtime: 1 hr 30 min
Access: on HBO Max there were links here in the original doc
Content Warning: Institutional racism, police violence, and legal violence. An actively investigated murder scene is the subject of the last half of the documentary, and the events of the murder are heavily discussed. A real person’s bloodstains are shown.

One of the most important documentaries on the institutional racism faced by black people in America and how American socialism was deliberately killed by the American Government, The Murder of Fred Hampton was a documentary on the chairman of Chicago’s Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, that became a documentary on his murder in a planned hit by the Chicago police that occurred WHILE THE DOCUMENTARY WAS BEING FILMED. As you watch the film, I want you to focus on the vibrancy of the community that Hampton and the Panthers were building in Chicago, and the unity and liberation in Hampton’s rhetoric. You’ll see a person directly diagnose the racism and social discontent in America and be directly targeted for saying the truth. You’ll also see what the system does to people who are actively trying to fight injustice, and the playbook for every modern police brutality and murder lawsuit that came afterwards.

Chicken Exit: Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

(dir. By Shaka King; wri. By Will Berson, Shaka King, Kenneth Lucas, and Keith Lucas; ed. By Kristan Sprague)
Runtime: 2 hr 6 min
Access: on HBO Max
Content Warning: A lot of very violent shootouts, lots of police brutality, and heavy swearing

A historically accurate but fictionalized account of the conspiracy that led to Hampton’s murder, that focuses more on how the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover especially, conspired to assassinate Hampton.

Film 2: Yojimbo (1961)

(dir. By Akira Kurosawa; wri. By Akira Kurosawa; ed. By Akira Kurosawa)
Runtime: 1 hr 51 min
Access: On HBO Max or on the Internet Archive
Content Warning: A lot of people get killed. It’s largely bloodless, I don’t believe there’s a classic chambara bloodspray, but there’s a lot of dying regardless. The worst one is that people get caught in a burning building and die inside. The title character does get tortured and his legs broken

A mysterious stranger rolls into a small village and is immediately sized up for a coffin. Maybe the second most famous of Kurosawa’s chambara jidaigeki (lit. “sword fighting period drama”) behind world-renowned Seven Samurai (not on here cuz it’s kinda boring), Yojimbo is a master class in samurai storytelling and Kurosawa’s filmmaking in particular. As writer, director, and editor is able to express himself on every level of this film with dynamic camera movements, rhythmic edits, and the iconic direction to give each actor to give their characters unique physical ticks. All this combined with an amazing score (a director is only as good as their composer) and Toshiro Mifune’s instantly memorable title performance adds up to a classic blockbuster that makes it easy to see why Sergio Leone copied it wholesale for his first spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars.

Chicken Exit: The Hidden Fortress (1959)

(dir. By Akira Kurosawa; wri. By Hideo Oguni and Akira Kurosawa; ed. By Akira Kurosawa)
Runtime: 2hr 19 min
Access: On HBO Max or on the Internet Archive
Content Warning: More largely bloodless killing, a woman is sent into prostitution and another is threatened with it

There’s a lot of follow-ups you could choose for Yojimbo. You could go sequentially and recommend Yojimbo’s sequel Sanjuro. You could go with recognition and recommend Seven Samurai. You can even go with adaptation and recommend A Fistfull of Dollars. But I’m going with influence; what Yojimbo is to Fistful, The Hidden Fortress is to Star Wars. Two bumbling thieves stumble into a conflict between two great samurai clans, and team up with an old samurai and a princess to escape with some hidden gold. As you watch, note how basically all of the editing techniques and the large shape of the plot are direct obvious influences on the shape of Star Wars and how it feels.

Film 3: F For Fake (1973)

(dir. By Orson Welles; wri. By Orson Welles and Oja Kodar (uncredited); ed. By Marie-Sophie Dubus, Dominique Engerer, and Orson Welles (uncredited))
Runtime: 1hr and 29 min
Access: On HBO Max , the Internet Archive , Kanopy (library dependent) , and YouTube
Content Warning: Some women are leered at.

One of my favorite movies and in my opinion the peak of Welles’ career, F for Fake is… a documentary? Video essay? Video memoir? Some sort of auto/regular-biographical video object made with the upmost skill. After a brief introduction by Welles on magic and film, what follows is an hour of truth that interrogates our assumptions of the real and the fake, of fame and seclusion, of lies and life, and of art and forgery. What happens when you can’t tell real from imitation? What happens when imitations become truth? What happens when someone imitates a truth that doesn’t exist? Where do we categorize these things? Lucky for us, this film tells us where to categorize it.

Chicken Exit: Citizen Kane (1941)

(dir. By Orson Welles; wri. By Herman J. Mankowicz, Orson Welles, John Housemen, Roger Q. Denny, and Mollie Kent (last 3 uncredited); ed. By Robert Wise)
Runtime: 1hr and 59 min
Access: Rent on Amazon and rent on Apple TV (man streaming services suck, this is a classic film and you can’t find it anywhere for free)
Content Warning: There’s some domestic yelling, though no domestic violence. A child dies, but I don’t remember if it’s shown on screen or just implied

It’s just a good movie. Time has flattened this film so much that it’s surprising how weird and idiosyncratic it is. This is a film that opens with a full-length fake newsreel produced during a time where newsreels were still a thing. So that’s where its head’s at.

Film 4: But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)

(dir. By Jamie Babbit; wri. By Brian Wayne Peterson and Jamie Babbit; ed. By Cecily Rhett)
Runtime: 1hr and 26 min
Access: On Tubi (THE PEOPLE'S PLATFORM)
Content Warning: Rampant homophobia played for comedy, sex jokes (nothing that would make you blush though), and two non-nude sex scenes. This is a PG-13 that was made an R (almost NC-17) because it features gay people

This is just a classic, heartwarming love story of the kind that the 1900’s did so well with just enough 90’s sarcasm to not be too cloying. A (probably too lighthearted) lampooning of conversion therapy sees a young woman sent off to a conversion camp, even though she isn’t gay! Or is she..? A solid showing of comedic performances across the cast (including Dante Basco, who I know for being Zuko in Avatar?) makes this such a fun romp through a very dark subject.

Chicken Exit: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

(dir. By Stephan Elliott; wri. By Stephan Elliott; ed. By Sue Blainey)
Runtime: 1hr and 44 min
Access: On Tubi (THE GAYEST PLATFORM)
Content Warning: Homophobia, transphobia, and asianophobia. They’re all kinda played for comedy, but mostly the transphobia and the asianophobia. A character is nearly physically and sexually assaulted. Recreational drug use (pill popping is prevalent throughout)

Now I know you don’t always see eye to eye with their lifestyle, but they live just as valid an existance as any of us. That’s right mom, Australians are people too. Three drag queens are contracted for a residency on the other side of Australia, and they decide to get there via their budget barbie camper, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. A film about being yourself and finding acceptance, the real appeal is seeing three high-tier serious Australian Actors (Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, and Terrance Stamp) put on drag and lip-sync to ABBA. You’ll never look at Elrond the same way after you see him do Disco Queen.

Film 5: Akira (1988)

(dir. By Katsuhiro Otomo; wri. By Katsuhiro Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, adapted from a manga by Katsuhiro Otomo; ed. By Takeshi Seyama)
Runtime: 2hr and 04 min
Access: On Crunchyroll (Sub (Subtitled) only) (I don’t especially like Crunchyroll, honestly for the real anime experience you should pirate this) or Hulu with subscription (I also don’t like Hulu, again, pirate this movie)
Content Warning: Jeez this movie. Honestly I think you should take the chicken exit here. Gang violence between minors and adults. Reckless violence and anarchy. Drug use, even and especially by children and teenagers. Forced drugging. Police action against protestors. Threatened sexual assault. Lots of blood. Significant body horror (robotic parts being attached to bodies). Significant gore. Significant body horror (bodies being contorted unnaturally, bodies expanding unnaturally, people’s brains melting). A child’s guts FALL OUT OF HIS BODY. Military actions against children. Children’s toys used for horror. A global Apocalypse.

NEO TOKYO IS GOING TO E-X-P-L-O-D-E

You probably actually shouldn’t watch this movie. For one, Akira’s very long. For two, just look at that content warning. That said, Akira is a landmark anime film if there ever was one. Ghibli films are great, but they’re all largely children’s movies. Akira is a movie for angry Japanese teenagers. A deeply cynical, deeply jaded look at late 1980’s Japan; Neo-Tokyo has been so consumed by the military and commercialism that it’s become a sprawling neon dystopia where on every street you can find biker gangs, student protests, militant cults, psychic children, or all of the above. In this we find teenage biker gang members Tetsuo (when I say teenage, Tetsuo’s like 13) and Kaneda wrapped up in a government conspiracy to use and abuse psychic children in an attempt to bring about the psychic messiah Akira. Jaded, nihilistic, and apathetic, Akira is a bullet aimed directly for the temple of late 1980’s Japanese consumerism.

Akira became THE anime film in America by dint of the VHS rental market allowing for easy distribution of the dubbed VHS in 1991. Akira’s horror influences, beautiful animation (oh yeah, I didn’t mention this is one of the best look cartoons ever made), and anarchic nihilism made it perfect for the disaffected young adults of the 90’s raised on slasher films and the animation of Filmation, Hanna Barbera, Warner Bros., and Walt Disney. It was like nothing they’d ever seen, and yet it was everything they ever wanted.

If you do want to get a feel for Akira and it’s influence, watch this scene, then this compilation video, this scene, this music video, this scene, and then finally this anime music video for a fan convention (remembering that many of the people in this went on to become some of the most famous animators in Japan) as a palette cleanser for watching something made by an anti-semite. Note: there were video links here, I don't want to chase them down but they're a comp of akira slides, the slide in Nope, the Stronger video (the anti-semite mentioned), the bike gang war, and the Daicon IV opening animation if you want to watch them

Chicken Exit: Ghost in the Shell (1995)

(dir. By Mamoru Oshii and Mizuho Nishikubo; wri. By Shirow Masamune and Kazunori Ito; ed. By Shuichi Kakezu)
Runtime: 1hr and 23 min
Access: On Tubi (THE PLATFORM THAT NEVER MISSES), also for a real anime experience pay way too much for a vhs copy
Content Warning: Brief non-sexual nudity. Intense violence (both gunplay and martial arts). Mild body horror (the main character over-works her robotic body, causing the synthetic skin to tear and her robotic internals to break). Non-consensual body possession. Fake memories. Existential questions and crises

A much milder film than Akira (also much shorter), Ghost in the Shell follows Major Makoto Kusanagi, a cyborg policewoman and a member of New Port City’s Public Security Section 9, as she investigates a string of malignant hackings undergone by an entity known only as “The Puppet Master.” What follows is a meditation on personhood and evolution, some cool anime action, and the finest distillation of “Cyberpunk” since Blade Runner. As you watch this (and also Akira if you choose to do so), take notice of how long the camera lingers on the scenery and how the film chooses to edit more along feelings than with any particular plot-based rhythm.

Film 6: Night of The Living Dead (1968)

(dir. By George Romero; wri. By John Russo and George Romero; ed. By Hugh C. Daly and George Romero, both uncredited)
Runtime: 1hr and 36 min
Access: Literally anywhere, this film is public domain. Here's archive.org, the full film is on its wikipedia page, and OF COURSE IT'S ON TUBI (THE PLATFORM OF THE LIVING DEAD)
Content Warning: Zombies! All the zombie stuff happens here, though it’s all in black and white and they had no money so it’s not that bad. These zombies are a lot smarter, they use weapons and work doors. All of the characters die, though no character is directly injured on screen (you’ll see what I mean) except for the first kill who has a very gnarly head knock against a gravestone. There is a child zombie. The zombies eat flesh at one point, though it looks more cheesy than creepy to me.

The first zombie movie might very well be the best one. As you watch, note how the film moves through different modes: first a small thriller about a crazed man chasing you down, then an almost one-room play style psychological thriller, and finally the full horde horror that the zombie genre is known for. Also note how topical it is: the film is actively working with the cultural fears of the 50’s and 60’s, the idea that even your own neighbors could be untrustworthy enemies literalized as your neighbors trying to eat your flesh. This distrust runs through the entire film up to its bitter, bleak, and darkly comedic end. There’s even some space-race atomic bomb fears here with the source of the zombies (which is some hilarious B-movie nonsense).

Chicken Exit: Halloween (1978)

(dir. By John Carpenter; wri. By John Carpenter and Debra Hill; ed. By John Boorstein and Tommy Wallace)
Runtime: 1hr and 31 min
Access: Best place is probably Shudder with a free trial, it's free with plex through Crackle, and I also found it on Sling
Content Warning: The first kill is the worst, as you watch a teenage girl be murdered by her younger brother through the brother’s eyes. The subsequent kills aren’t as bad, I honestly don’t think they’re even as bad as Us, and one is actually hilarious, to me at least. It does have a happy (ish) ending, which is why it’s the chicken exit.

In 1968 on Halloween in Haddonfield Illinois (yeah, it’s supposed to be Aurora, but they filmed it in California so it doesn’t look anything like an Illinois suburb) six-year-old Michael Myers killed his sister. In 1978, The Shape has come back. If a director is only as good as their composer, John Carpenter is amazing because he IS the composer of this all-time soundtrack. While this isn’t the first slasher movie (that’s agreed to be Black Christmas), it is the film that put slashers on the map by tapping into a specific 70’s cultural fear: what if someone just walked into your suburban home and killed you? It’s an all-timer, and the debut film of Jamie Lee-Curtis.

Film 7: Collateral (2004)

(dir. By Michael Mann; wri. By Stuart Beattle; ed. By Jim Miller and Paul Rubell)
Runtime: 2 hours FLAT
Access: Seems like only Paramount+, though you can get a free trial
Content Warning: Hard language and a lot of gun violence. Several dead bodies. A lot of alpha-male ideology happens up in this.

You’ve seen Michael Mann’s worst (The Keep) and you’ve seen his best (Heat), now watch his most fun. Collateral is what I would call a “definitive” movie, as in it defines movies for me. A cinch-tight premise (what if you were the taxi driver for a hitman?) serves as the runway for two all-star actors (Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx) to strut their stuff, and you don’t really need anything more than that. However, Mann takes this engaging but boilerplate thriller concept and elevates it; gorging it full of movie-star faces, all time character actor performances, and some of the most beautiful photography and lighting LA has on offer. Cruise is in rarified form here, giving the performance of his career that leverages his somehow alienating charisma and turns it into something genuinely disturbing, more force of nature than human. It’s a definitive movie: a singular story that’s instantly understandable and effortlessly engaging.

Chicken Exit: Unstoppable (2010)

(dir. By Tony Scott; wri. By Michael Bomback; ed. By Robert Duffy and Chris Lebenzon)
Runtime: 1 hr 38 min
Access: Rent on YouTube or rent on Amazon
Content Warning: Hard language, Hooter’s. Big Train. additional content warning I forgot to add in the original list: one of the main characters is under a restraining order from his wife for intimidating her with violence, and the film generally runs on the "dad/husband's never home, but if he saves the day I still love him" cliche.

Another “definitive” movie, this is the last film by the blockbuster master Tony Scott. A runaway train carrying 200 tons of dangerous chemicals is loose, and two hardscrabble train employees (Hollywood heartthrob Chris Evans and ALL TIMER DENZEL WASHINGTON) have to put their differences aside to stop the…Unstoppable.

Overtime Film: Wolf Children (2012)

(dir. By Mamoru Hosoda; wri. By Mamoru Hosoda and Satoko Okudera; ed. By Shigeru Nishiyama)
Runtime: 1 hr 57 min
Access: Crunchyroll with subscription, remember: real anime is piracy
Content Warning: A woman has implied sex with a werewolf (in human form). Pregnancy issues. Bullying. The werewolf gets hit by a car in wolf form.
This is the one mother’s day movie. I love you mom.

So that’s it! I hope you have fun with these movies, or at least have an artistic emotional experience. I tried to grab a lot of films that I hold close to me, and I hope you can get a sense of what I enjoy from this too!

I love you oodles and oodles,
Your Son [GOVERNMENT NAME]


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