Who doesn't have their favorite movie mothers? A lot of folks look no further than Mommie Dearest and Faye Dunaway's devil-in-tweased-eyebrows take on Joan Crawford. My personal favorite is Albert Brooks's Mother, because I like my acidic worldview with a heaping side of Jewish humor, and no one beats Debbie Reynolds as his overbearing, self-involved mamaleh.
This year offered plenty of memorable mothers in movies. Here are our Top 10:
This year offered plenty of memorable mothers in movies. Here are our Top 10:
10. Coriolanus: Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave)
In this modernized Shakespeare drama, the title may belong to Ralph Fiennes's uncompromising Roman general, but the balls in the family clearly belong to his ambitious mother, Volumnia, played with hissing intensity by hawk-eyed Redgrave.
9. Paranormal Activity 3: Julie (Lauren Bittner)
In this hugely popular horror prequel, Julie is really a very nice, modern mother you can imagine seeing in Target buying impulse products at checkout. She loves her two daughters but also wants to be sexy for her younger live-in boyfriend. Who can blame her if she's a bit, well, distracted. And so she falls into that mother-in-a-supernatural story trap: She doesn't listen to her daughter when the girl complains that her invisible friend is behaving badly. She really should have listened.
8. The Help: Charlotte Phelan (Allison Janney)
Janney has a very tricky role in The Help, as the sympathetic monster -- and mother of "Skeeter" (Emma Stone) -- whose act of social cowardice in the face of the white women's league, and the betrayal of her longtime African-American housekeeper, shows racism not as an idea but as a tragic daily practice.
7. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1: Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart)
Not only does Bella finally commit to Team Edward as bloodsucker and wife, but she gets knocked up on the honeymoon. Her maternal instincts awaken -- she's very pro-life for a future vampire -- which leads to a horrifying birthing scene that makes the audience yearn for an epidural.
6. J. Edgar: Anna Marie Hoover (Judi Dench)
The most intense scene in the movie is the intimate bedroom tête-à-tête between Leo DiCaprio's fussy future head of the FBI and Dench's iron-willed mother, who delivers a castrating cautionary tale about what happens to boys who become "daffodils." It's a gay cliché: domineering mother, closeted son.
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2: Molly Weasley (Julie Walters)
Mrs. Weasley, mother of Ron and all those gingers, can always be counted on to remind everyone to put on a sweater if they're out flying. As sweetly played by Walters, she's the plump, pleasing mother who bakes a mean Christmas pudding and doesn't judge when those darn kids bring Death Eaters down on the family home.
4. The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep)
Streep is America's best actress, but no one would accuse her Maggie of being mother of this or any year. She is brutally oblivious to her grown daughter's needs, treating her like a dull maidservant with a casual abusiveness -- while her son is off in South Africa and, not surprisingly, can't be bothered to return home for a visit with his waning Mum.
3. We Need to Talk About Kevin: Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton)
This postpartum depression turned arty horror film finds the rawly beautiful Swinton wondering if it's nature or nurture that she's ambivalent about her son -- who goes on to kill and kill again. Audiences exit the theater hotly debating whether or not she's partly to blame for her scary son's psychosis.
2. The Descendants: Elizabeth King (Patricia Hastie)
The mother in this family drama serves as a catalyst for the belated coming of age of George Clooney's "backup dad." While she has one brief flashback on water skis, she's a coma-mom for the remainder, wasting away under a siege of tubes and projected emotions. The impact of her absence has a gravitational pull in every frame of the movie.
1. Melancholia: Gaby (Charlotte Rampling)
Rampling's brutal mother of the bride stands up at her fragile daughter's wedding reception and stamps on the institution of marriage like it was a flaming bag of poo. It's less a toast than pouring kerosene on the bridal party's emotional sparks.
Honorable mentions: ethereal mom Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) in The Tree of Life; divorced mom Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) in The Whistleblower; battling Manhattan moms Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) and Nancy Cowan (Kate Winslet) in Carnage; separated Muslim mom Simin (Leila Hatami) in A Separation; and extraterrestrially probed breeder stay-at-home Mom (Joan Cusack) in Mars Needs Moms.
