Mean Girls, Pitch Perfect, Mamma Mia, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Matrix, Diary of a Mad Black Woman… Or, just like, whatever is on Hallmark at the moment.
My mom was always more of a Lifetime original person than a Hallmark original person She likes the murder and intrigue more than the sappiness.
We saw Simon Birch in theaters back when it came out. We ended up reading the book in high school years later and they really dumbed it down for the film version.
For a few years my mother would take us to see a movie every Saturday morning, but there isn't always a new kid friendly movie so I saw some really strange ones for a 10 year old to see. There was a Holocaust movie starring Robin Williams, a bunch of people in Ireland winning the lottery, some sort of You've Got Mail knockoff.
Just from quick googling, the Robin Williams holocaust movie is Jakob the Liar ( 1999 ) and the Irish lottery movie is Waking Ned Devine ( 1998 ) My grandma would also occasionally take me to see non-kid friendly movies. Gladiator and The Sixth Sense being notable ones.
I'm pretty sure this is how my entire soccer team ended up going to see the 1993 version of The Three Musketeers with Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Rebecca DeMornay and... Oliver Platt!!! (Not that it wasn't kid-friendly, more just that I can remember none of us really wanted to see it, and my coach didn't seem like he did either, but I'm assuming he must have made some commitment to taking the whole team to go see a movie and that one must have worked logistically.)
My mom likes a lot of movies, a lot of obvious ones, so instead I'll share something I hope will be heartwarming. Ever since I moved back in with my mom and brother, she's followed along with the MCU with me, which has been nice. She especially likes Loki. She also is always confused why certain films get a negative reaction, which I suppose is just a result of her uncomplicated nature.
Belated mother's day bump: Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias are on Netflix now. Moms are eating.