Unlike me, my momma is a movie buff. Like has a full alphabetized collection, screens a person (including a credit check) before she allows them to borrow a DVD, can magically sense if a DVD is out or order/missing or being tampered with in the moment it happens type buff. She especially loves Disney animated films, and so after crashing Valentina’s movie party, I decided I would throw my own while getting to know my momma better.
Here are Ibeth’s Top 7 Movies of All Time:
[In an effort to capture my mother's character, I tried to type up what she said verbatim. So keep in mind this was a conversational interview.]
- Moll Flanders- “I like the story and it was like a old time story, an epic kinda movie and stuff like that. I just like that one.”
- The Feast of All Saints- “That’s another one I like for the story, you know, how it was, and the differences between black and whites. The slavery kinda thing, and how the black folks were treated and the white people having babies and not recognizing the babies.”
- Roots- “One that you never watch, that’s like serious, they grab him in Africa and brought him over here and they tried to change his name and he was trying to stay true to who he was and they beat him up to try and rape him. His name was Kunta Kinte and they wanted to call him Toby. That movie made me cry, I like movies that make me cry and smile and feel happy.”
- Armageddon- “I like that one, I don’t know why. It was a stupid movie. Bruce Willis was in it.”
- The Tuskegee Airmen- “That’s when the Black pilots in this country, you know how they fought and they weren’t recognized. This one is the real thing, not like Red Tails. That one is just a copy of this one.”
6. Men of Honor- “With Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Al Pacino, or no, Robert DeNiro. That one is based on a true story of a black man that was a diver. He had to fight to get into the school because he was black they tried to stop him from becoming a Navy Seal diver. He passed all the test and they kept on saying that he was cheating because ‘No Negro could be that bright‘ but he proved to everyone that he was not cheating and everything.”
7. Finding Nemo- “I love my little Nemo” (laughs)
8. The Sixth Sense- “You know I like scary movies. It was kinda scary, at the beginning, especially if you didn’t know what it was about.”
Honorable Mentions: Antowne Fisher, Pride, Schindler’s List, The Great Debaters.
So what I will say is that my mother also LOVES movies about OVERCOMING (We shall overcome!!), based on a true-life stories and time pieces. Our tastes are very different, indeed.
