For Mother's Day, we have one of the few films Martin Scorsese ever made about a woman, and one of his best at that. I think this movie isn't often remembered as part of his canon mostly because it doesn't fit into the Scorsese "mold" of gangsters and violence that he's most known for, but it's just as good and interesting as any of those, and a perfect time capsule for the era in which it was made. Ellen Burstyn plays Alice Hyatt, a housewife in a miserable marriage to a guy who abuses both her and her 12 year old son. When he dies in an accident and leaves them penniless, she has to step up and do something to support herself and her kid for the first time in her life. Burstyn is fantastic in the role which earned her a Best Actress Oscar, and the mother-son relationship is funny, earnest and specifically drawn. The ending is slightly controversial, given the movie's ostensibly feminist message, but it's also kind of realistic for the time. This movie was so popular it actually inspired a long running sitcom. Happy Mother's Day everybody!
