Whether you’re taking the whole family out for celebratory brunch or sending flowers and a card to your long-distance mom, it’s never too late to sneak a movie or show into your Mother’s Day plans.

Streaming now, here are 15 movies and series about the magical art of mothering, perfect for watching with your mom this weekend.

Note: Many of the films and shows on this list are not suitable for all ages, so we’ve marked the kid-friendliest options with an asterisk (*) for your knowledge. Enjoy! 

1. Mamma Mia! (2008) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) 

You haven’t lived until you and your mom have belted “Waterloo” as a team.

Starring Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, and Cher, this ABBA-infused double feature is what spectacular Mother’s Days are made of. Pour the mimosas, grab your bell-bottoms, and prepare to be dazzled.

Mamma Mia! (2008) is available on Netflix.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) is available on HBO Now.

2. Dumplin’ (2018)

Getting along with family isn’t always easy, but reconciling your differences is often worth it.

SEE ALSO: Netflix’s ‘Dumplin’ delivers drag, Dolly, and the next Peter Kavinsky

Jennifer Aniston and Danielle Macdonald play a mother-daughter pair with different views on beauty, but a shared passion for Dolly Parton in Netflix’s Dumplin’. Touching and hilarious, this YA novel turned feature film will get you humming “9 to 5” and hugging it out in no time.

Dumplin’ (2018) is available on Netflix.

3. Akeelah and the Bee (2006)*

Mothers always want to protect their children, even from themselves. 

Starring KeKe Palmer, Angela Bassett, and Laurence Fishburne, Akeelah and the Bee tells the story of a talented girl fighting for her chance to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Full of wonderful characters and a whole bunch of words you can’t spell, this is one underdog story with a complex parenting component you and your mom will love.

Akeelah and the Bee (2006) is available on Hulu.

4. Good Girls Season 1

Sometimes moms have to go to extreme lengths to take care of their kids. 

SEE ALSO: NBC’s ‘Good Girls’ deserves to be your next catch-up binge

This incredible dramatic comedy follows three moms (Christina Hendricks, Mae Whitman, and Retta) as they leave behind their suburban struggles to take on a life of crime. It’s a nail-biting binge, with just enough comedic relief to keep you from totally coming unhinged. Buckle up.

Good Girls Season 1 is available on Netflix.

5. Lady Bird (2017)

It’s the Greta Gerwig masterpiece heard round the world.

Lady Bird follows a restless Sacramento teen (Saoirse Ronan) as she struggles to come into her own and pushes her mother (Laurie Metcalf) away in the process. Painfully relatable, this movie might leave you and your mom in a nostalgic puddle of tears, but y’know, the good kind.

Lady Bird (2017) is available on Prime Video.

6. Grace & Frankie Seasons 1-5

If you’re not already firmly aboard the Grace & Frankie train, then you’re more than overdue to get caught up. Luckily, you and your mom can make a weekend out of it and indulge on all five seasons now.

Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sam Waterson, and Martin Sheen shine in a delightful sitcom chronicling the ups-and-downs of parenting grown-up children, while moving onto the next phase of after-seventy life. Full of heart and laughs, this show is next-level likable. 

Grace & Frankie Seasons 1-5 are available on Netflix.

7. Tully (2018)

Being a mom is hard. Like really, really, really hard.

Charlize Theron takes on a new kind of character study in this dramatic film, examining what it means for one woman to try and do it all. Heart-wrenching and full of surprises, Tully won’t be an easy watch — but it’s important viewing for any adult child wanting to understand all that moms go through for their kids.

Tully (2018) is available on HBO Now. 

8. Dead To Me Season 1

OK, mothering is only one part of this addicting series — but you and your mom will still love it.

Dead To Me takes a look at life after loss and what it means to be a newly single parent, with a top-notch cast including Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini.

Then, things get wild. Full of twists, turns, and the best one-liners since Big Little Lies, you’re gonna wanna catch this new Netflix show ASAP.

Dead to Me Season 1 is available on Netflix.

9. Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

The only mom you want to like you more than your own? Your significant other’s. 

SEE ALSO: ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ and the immense pressure to feel seen

Starring Constance Wu and Michelle Yeoh, last summer’s smash-hit takes a larger-than-life look at the ever-evolving relationship between mothers and their children. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll plan a trip to Singapore.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) is available on Hulu.

10. Incredibles 2 (2018)*

Super and supportive, Elastigirl is one truly incredible mom.

The long-awaited next chapter in the lives of The Incredibles arrived in theaters last summer, and its parenting narrative stood out to critics and fans alike. A perfect follow-up to the already flawless The Incredibles (2004), this family-friendly flick is just the right celebratory mom film for your Mother’s Day. 

Incredibles 2 (2018) is available on Netflix.

11. Freaky Friday (2003)*

It’s the most classic of Mother’s Day movies! 

This body-swap flick looks at the hilariously complicated relationship between a buttoned-up mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her rebellious teenage daughter (Lindsay Lohan). Also featuring Chad Michael Murray at his absolute finest, you and your mom are gonna love it.

Freaky Friday (2003) is available on HBO Now.

12. Stepmom (1998)

Mothering is complicated. Step-mothering? Just as complicated.

An oldie, but a goodie, this iconic drama starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon follows one family as they attempt to navigate the complex realities of parenting children of divorce. Moving and poignant, this flick will more than pull at your heart strings. Ask your mom if she has tissues in advance.

Stepmom (1998) is available on STARZ. 

13. Monster-in-Law (2005)

This ridiculous aughts comedy takes in-law horror stories to the next level.

Featuring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda having the most fun, Monster-in-Law documents the extreme lengths one woman will go to protect her son from “the wrong woman.” Hilarious and over-the-top, this one is worth the revisit. 

Monster-in-Law (2005) is available on Netflix.

14. The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Adoptive parenting can be complex, especially for queer couples. The Kids Are All Right takes that reality to its most ludicrous limits.

With an all-star cast of layered characters and some of the snappiest dialogue the family drama has ever known, this movie is one that will hang with you long after the credits roll.

The Kids Are All Right is available on STARZ. 

15. Gilmore Girls Seasons 1-7 and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

A more iconic mother-daughter duo has never been found. 

Starring Alexis Bledel and Lauren Graham as the titular Gilmore Girls, this series is a binge too big for one weekend — but it couldn’t hurt to squeeze in a few episodes. Packed with hilarious dialogue and some of the most delightful characters ever written, this is what mothering dreams are made of.

Gilmore Girls Seasons 1-7 and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life are available on Netflix.

The following is a spoiler-free review of Netflix’s Easy Season 3.

Sometimes the best ending is no ending at all. 

Fans of Joe Swanberg’s brilliant Easy are in for a bittersweet binge this weekend, as the series’ third and final season begins streaming on Netflix. 

Throughout the show’s first two installments, viewers watched as the lives of dozens of characters shifted in and out focus of the anthology format. We saw families form, relationships change, altercations unfold, and businesses begin. There were episodes that reminded you of yourself, moments that reminded you of someone else, and narratives you’d never previously considered.

Since its premiere in 2016, Easy has progressed much like life, with uneven doses of levity and tragedy. It’s a show packed full of comedy, but with the realistic world-building of any award-worthy drama. Season 3 is no different. 

The best part? ‘Easy’ doesn’t end. 

With just nine brief episodes, Easy Season 3 continues its tradition of low-stakes, high-emotion storytelling. We follow up with the so-called “Brewery Brothers” (Dave Franco and Evan Jonigkeit), see what is and isn’t working in Andi (Elizabeth Reaser) and Kyle’s (Michael Chernus) open marriage, and watch as Annie (Kate Micucci) continues to exhaust all of her happiness options, inside and outside of the treacherous Chicago dating pool. 

We even get yet another gobsmacking chapter in the never-ending saga that is Jacob Malco’s (Marc Maron) life, as Easy takes on the topic of sexual abuse allegations with marked dexterity.

The stories are as well-written and as moving as ever, but the best part? They don’t really end. 

Now, that’s not to say the final credits come with a surprise Easy Season 4 announcement. As far as we know, the show is very much over — but the way Swanberg has written his characters’ last moments on-screen allows them to live on. 

SEE ALSO: Netflix’s ‘Chambers’ falls short of its creepy potential

Whereas other shows might rush to wrap up storylines and deliver satisfying conclusions, Easy digs even further into its realness by introducing new obstacles and possibilities for nearly every character. As always, this show dedicates time and effort to presenting its audience with real people. That is, after all, what so many of us real “real people” are watching it for.

In Episode 5, Andi and Kyle — whose story long-time viewers will remember opened the series’ pilot — engage in a complex conversation about jealousy and commitment that lasts a whopping 19 minutes. It is spectacularly scripted, intensely felt, and totally engrossing. 

Following thread after thread with the kind of dedication and care someone actually trying to save their marriage would employ, Swanberg builds two complete lives through this dialogue alone. Had you never seen these characters before and been aware you would never see them again, you would still regard them as real people and likely be just as moved by their charged exchange.

This realness is what makes Easy feel truly timeless. While few characters receive traditional “endings,” Swanberg cherishes the fictional people his show has created. He respects not only where they have been, but where they are going, with or without an audience. When someone’s story isn’t ready to end, it doesn’t end. It’s as simple as that.

Now in its complete form, Easy is one of the most skillful displays of character creation ever rendered, certainly on Netflix and quite possibly on television at large. While fans are sure to finish the series’ last episodes with heavy hearts knowing that this weird and wonderful world is coming to a close, Swanberg has once again delivered — for both his audience and his characters.

Easy: Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.

It sounds like someone accidentally hit adjacent keys on a xylophone. The understated double ping hits me with a jolt of excitement, a swooping stomach, and even a bit of relief.

Whenever I hear the now-retired Facebook Messenger notification, I’m transported back to 2013, when I happily, gratefully, giddily got a message from someone I liked, who would later become my partner. Back then, we talked almost daily on, of all chat platforms, Messenger.

As devices, software applications, and apps become omnipresent, the User Interface (UI) sounds they emit — the pings, bings, and blongs vying for our attention — have also started to contribute to the sonic fabric of our lives. And just as a song has the power to take you back to a particular moment in time, the sounds emitted by our connected devices can trigger memories, thoughts, and feelings, too. 

“The sounds that we have are adding to that tapestry,” Will Littlejohn, Facebook’s sound design director, said.

If you’ve had a particularly stressful job with a trigger-happy boss, perhaps you feel a churn of anxiety when a notification tells you you’ve received an email. Or if you grew up a child of AOL, maybe an intense, vivid memory of using AIM as a tween occurs if someone plays you the iconic doors opening and closing sounds. When distinct and repeated sensory stimuli, like UI sounds, are paired with feelings, moods, and memories, our brains build bridges between the two. 

“Who we are is not just the neurons we have,”  Santiago Jaramillo, a University of Oregon neuroscientist who studies sound and the brain, said, referring to cells that transmit information. “It’s how they are connected.”

My partner and I began our casual courtship in 2013. For the next year, as we flirted, chatted, and became increasingly part of each other’s lives, our preferred mode of communication was … Facebook Messenger. 

Facebook was already somewhat uncool by then — the days of painstaking album uploads had faded — but as young 20-somethings looking to chat during the day about nothing much, it worked for us. Somehow, texting felt too formal. But we weren’t on the level of chatting daily over Gchat, like we both did with our friends. We were friends on Facebook, and Messenger was a way we could stay in constant communication, without the commitment or overt familiarity of other platforms.

In the intervening years, I didn’t use Facebook Messenger much. But when I did, and when I received a sound notification when I wasn’t expecting it, I noticed that the sound would immediately make me think of my partner. I would even get a sweep of relief and excited nervousness, like the person I was interested in had just sent me a message to say “hi,” confirming that they liked me with a DM, all over again.

When I explained what happened with the Facebook Messenger sound, Jaramillo responded with a laugh: “You have been conditioned.” 

Pathways to the past

For the last 30 years, scientists have been using animals, like mice, to learn how sound becomes associated with a memory, thought, feeling, or state of being. They’ve discovered that your brain creates pathways connecting the parts that process sound with the parts linked to emotions and memories. 

When your brain registers some sort of stimulus, like a sound, you can process it in a variety of ways. You might have an innate response, such as jumping when you hear a loud sound. You might also glean information from the sound: For example, the sound of an idling engine tells you someone is waiting outside.

In the most basic experiments that illustrate this, researchers shock a mouse every time it hears a particular sound. After a certain amount of time, just hearing the sound — without the shock — causes the mouse to jump as if it had just been shocked. What I was experiencing when I felt my own jolt of excitement at the Facebook Messenger sound was a more complex version of this same phenomenon, Jaramillo explained.

“It is through these changes and connections in the brain that you associate these sounds with these responses,” Jaramillo said.

In the brain, a sound is never just the raw data of a sound wave: there’s always something more to it. According to a study Jaramillo published in January, we associate sounds with memories at the first pitstop sound makes in our brains: the auditory cortex. As it gets digested in more complex regions of the brain, those associations only grow stronger.

This can have a domino effect throughout the brain, prompting powerful feelings.

“It’s almost like a multiple step process,” Jaramillo said. “Once you bring an association, that brings with it many other associations.” 

Conditioning

I wondered why the Facebook Messenger sound prompted this reaction in me, while other sounds — like the Gchat notification sound — had no particular emotional effect. The Gchat sound is still coded with information (it’s telling me I’ve got a chat!) — but that information isn’t powerfully associated with a memory or feeling.

It turns out my partner and I had inadvertently created the perfect conditions for creating a strong neural pathway. 

“To be effective for creating associations, a sound has to be clearly differentiable,” Jaramillo said. “Then, if you have consistency and repetition, a strong association will be created.”

The Facebook Messenger sound hit all of these criteria. It was a unique sound, that was consistently associated with a specific experience, repeated many times. Because I only ever really talked to my partner (and not other people) on Facebook Messenger, I associated the sound with him; because we talked a lot, the association became strong; because we repeated the experience almost daily for about a year, it became engrained — so engrained that years after the fact, an unexpected encounter with the sound rendered the emotional memory as if it were happening all over again.

“There are experiments where you don’t present a sound for a long, long time,” Jaramillo said. “But if you present it years later, you may still recall the memories. Some of the neurons keep those memories. Some of those seem to be very powerful in how long they last, and researchers are still trying to understand what are the mechanisms that allow you to have such a long, long memory.”

Designing for life

Before notifications became a constant part of our lives, sound designers did not take as much care in their creation. Think of the grating early Nokia cellphone ring, or how annoying the AIM door shutting and opening could become if a friend got signed on or offline every time their computer went to sleep or woke up.

Today, sound designers are wiser, and more considerate, about how the sounds they design can be both useful, and — the holy grail of sound design — unnoticeable. A lot of that mission has to do with thinking through what emotions the sounds themselves might evoke.

“The best sound designers are not going to talk about the tools or the tech, they’re going to try to pull emotions out of people,” Dallas Taylor, a sound designer who runs a popular podcast about sound, called Twenty Thousand Hertz, said.

These emotional considerations are something that sound designers consider at the highest levels. 

When Littlejohn, Facebook’s head of sound design, and his team design the sounds that populate Facebook, they try to create a sonic identity for the platform, while also presenting a neutral canvas.

“From the very beginning when we’re crafting sounds, we’re making sure that the sounds are designed in such a way that they will not create negative emotions over time,” Littlejohn said. “We’re not trying to create sounds that are creating positive associations overtly, what we’re trying to do is create sounds that have the potential to create great associations, if that’s the context in which they’re heard.”

In other words, the sounds themselves don’t create the emotions – the associations do. But the often repeated nature of UI sounds, and the social context in which they’re used, makes them ripe for emotional connections. 

SEE ALSO: AOL Instant Messenger is being laid to rest and the internet is mourning very loudly

“The sound itself can’t force a feeling,” Taylor said. “It has to be the context that that sound is in.”

Additionally, UI sounds themselves may be new — and specifically primed for association – but the phenomenon is just an extension of how our brains already process sound, whether created by the wind and the trees, or a buzz in our pocket.

“These cues are what help to bring context to what we’re experiencing with our other senses,” Littlejohn said. “That’s how we interact with the world. Whether it’s being created through a device, and we design what’s emitted, or whether it comes from nature or something mechanical, I think that relationship has always been there. It’s now manifested in a new way through technology.”

A leaking time capsule

Buried in an episode on UI sound design on Taylor’s podcast was the Facebook notification noise that soundtracked the first six to 12 months of my relationship. Unlike the new, high-pitched, cheery “pop ding” notification, this one, which was used by Facebook prior to 2014, is more musical, yet muted. When I heard it, I knew instantly that this was the true store of my emotional memories about those early flirtations.

Beginning in 2013, I heard the clumsy xylophone — while for latter day chats, the pop ding. And I have a deeper connection to the first one. Unbeknownst to me, the memory had been mummified in my brain, ready to be re-awoken by the podcast.

“The memory is kind of there in the brain, latent and hidden,” Jaramillo said. “If it gets associated again with the particular event, then it would reappear.”

Of course, the flip side of my sonic revelation is that the memories and emotions associated with the post-2014 sound are becoming diluted. I recently started using Messenger more to communicate with a group of colleagues. The butterflies in my stomach don’t flutter as hard when I hear the pop ding these days. But they still do when I hear the vintage notes.

“When you hear the same sound, but you don’t get exposed to the same thing, then the association can fade,” Jaramillo said.

Thanks to a technological coincidence, I have a nostalgic jewel contained within a sound I am unlikely to hear, unless I seek it out. That’s especially powerful for me today, six years later. But I can’t go back to it all the time, or the association will become weaker.

But I don’t need to, anyway; as my partner and I create new sonic associations I may discover in another six, 16, or 60 years that those first six months are still encased in neural amber. And that’s enough to make my stomach flip whenever I choose to think about it.

Pilots flying at high altitudes need extra oxygen, or they’ll start to lose vision — and eventually pass out.

Similarly, creatures dwelling in the oceans also require oxygen to see. Unfortunately for them, the seas are now gradually losing oxygen, a problematic marine event known as deoxygenation. Recognizing that this loss of oxygen could also cause blindness in sea organisms, scientists at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography tested how reduced oxygen levels impacted the vision of squid, octopus, and crab species. Their results, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, showed that these organisms did indeed experience varying degrees of blindness, including near total blindness. 

“It’s a pretty significant issue in the oceans because organisms rely on oxygen to survive,” said Lillian McCormick, a marine scientist at Scripps and lead author of the study, emphasizing that oxygen is needed for more than breathing. “Vision is a very demanding sensory process. It uses oxygen molecules.”

It’s not as if sea creatures are now on the brink of blindness, suffocation, or death as they wander the dark seas without vision. But as oxygen levels gradually fall — due to the planet’s accelerating warming — these creatures’ vision may very well deteriorate. 

“They might not be dead, but if they can’t see well, they potentially won’t see predators, light changes, or things on the sea floor,” said Karen Wishner, a biological oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island who had no role in the research. “It’s potentially of critical importance.”

Out in the vast open oceans, there are two big drivers of oxygen loss. One is simple physics. “As the ocean absorbs heat — excess heat from the greenhouse effect — the water generally holds less gas,” said Takamitsu Ito, an oceanographer at Georgia Tech who also had no role in the study. 

The other is a decline in the mixing of oxygen into deeper ocean waters. The planet’s oceans absorb over 90 percent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by human-created carbon emissions, and most of this heat is absorbed near the surface. Oxygen is soaked up near the surface, too. This creates a robust, warm layer of water atop the sea. But now this layer of excessively warmed, buoyant water is more resistant to mixing in with the ocean depths. This deprives deeper dwelling animals of oxygen, explained Ito. 

SEE ALSO: Fearless TV weather forecasters air the planet’s soaring carbon levels

But unlike pilots, who can use supplemental oxygen up in the sky, sea creatures can’t escape a water world with declining oxygen. And as this new research suggests, it won’t just impact their breathing. It can blind them. “Here’s a whole different type of physiological response that can affect what these animals can do and how they live,” said Wishner.

“Clearly, this study suggests there are other physiological issues besides breathing,” added Jeremy Owens, a marine biogeochemist at Florida State University who had no involvement in the study. 

To see how a species of octopus and squid, and two species of crab, reacted to incrementally lowered levels of oxygen, Scripps’ McCormick collected dozens of these creatures from the ocean and brought them back to the institute’s lab. In their tiny, young larvae stages, she placed them in seawater — which oxygen levels she could control — and then stuck a small electrode into their eyes. This allowed her, in real time, to measure the retinal function of their eyes (retinas contain visual cells), their sensitivity to light, and the ability of their retinas to respond to fast-moving objects. 

This technique, called an electroretinogram, is like the common medical practice of using an EKG to detect the health of a human heart, said McCormick.

The squid and brachyuran crab lost nearly all their sight, when exposed to the lowest oxygen levels tested. The octopus held out for a while, but eventually started going blind. Meanwhile, the tuna crab experienced the smallest loss, at 60 percent of its vision. “That’s still a decent amount of loss,” noted McCormick.

For a wild creature, losing eyesight is always a terrible option. But especially so for young creatures, who are battling competitors for food and seeking to avoid larger, voracious predators. In many marine creatures relatively few young larvae survive to adulthood as it is, so a decline or loss of vision can be detrimental, explained McCormick. 

Fortunately, when she returned oxygen levels to normal, the critters studied regained their vision. But in a deoxygenated ocean, marine organisms won’t have such luck.

Taken alone, gradual blindness is a big problem. But ocean dwellers also contend with both rising temperatures and acidifying waters, both of which are direct consequences of skyrocketing carbon emissions in the atmosphere. 

“[Marine life] has multiple stressors — how do organisms respond to all these stressors?” asked Owens. 

Humanity will find out. Though modern civilization has the potential and ability to fend off the grimmest of environmental scenarios, it’s highly unrealistic — if not bordering on impossible —  that nations around the world will curb warming at levels that would limit major impacts to the oceans.

What’s more, there’s no evidence that the ocean’s oxygen loss will taper off. The rates of loss over the last half-century are already pretty extraordinary. “The current rate we’re losing oxygen is likely faster than we’ve seen in the geologic record,” said Owens. 

“It’s not catastrophic at the moment,” he added. “But will it continue to go down this path?”