'The Mother' Scores Netflix's Top Opening Weekend Debut of 2023!

Kylie Jenner shows off a new sophisticated style. Jennifer Garner shares another episode of her Pretend Cooking Show, making Maple Butter.

Love is in the air on Netflix, as two of the steamer’s most popular romance franchises dominated the English-language television charts for the week of May 15 to May 21.

The Mother” remains Netflix’s biggest opening weekend of 2023 with 83.71 million hours viewed since its premiere. One of the shining moments in the Netflix action thriller is the largescale hallway fight The Mother (Jennifer Lopez) embarks on in the Mexican compound of baddie Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal). To the tune of Massive Attack’s “Angel,” Lopez goes from room to room, offing bad guys while trying to rescue her daughter. The song was always a part of director Niki Caro’s extended vision for the movie.

The Mother,” has only been out for a week and has scored Netflix’s biggest opening weekend for a film of 2023 with 83.71 million hours viewed since its premiere. But the story of a Mother, played by Lopez, determined to protect the child she gave up for adoption at any cost, was a tough sell for Netflix. When director Niki Caro was presented with the script, she asked the film’s producer, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, if the streaming giant would be open to it.

Jennifer Lopez has another hit on her hands with “The Mother”.

A family affair! Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck kicked off Mother’s Day weekend by watching her new movie, a source exclusively tells Us Weekly.

EXCLUSIVE: Jennifer Lopez appeared on television screens across the U.S. this Mother’s Day weekend.

Jennifer Lopez‘s new movie The Mother is unlike anything she’s ever done before.

About twenty minutes into the new Netflix thriller “The Mother,” star Jennifer Lopez locks eyes with a snarling, angry wolf in the snowy Alaskan wilderness. Just as Lopez raises her rifle, a bunch of cute wolf babies emerge from their snowy home.

The Mother is a mutha of an intimately scaled action film, a violent female-centric drama about a hardened combat veteran who has great difficulty adapting to being anything other than a tough soldier, and that includes being a mother. Joining Kathryn Bigelow, Patty Jenkins, Gina Prince-Blythewood, Mimi Leder and the Wachowski siblings among women responsible for notable action features, Aussie director Niki Caro (Whale Rider, Mulan) has delivered a film that could easily have veered into sentiment at any moment but instead remains tough as nails and doesn’t go soft at the end. The film would surely have an even greater impact on the big screen but, as it is, launched Friday on Netflix.

Lucy Paez is recounting her audition for the role of Jennifer Lopez’s daughter in “The Mother”.

About twenty minutes into the new Netflix thriller “The Mother,” star Jennifer Lopez locks eyes with a snarling, angry wolf in the snowy Alaskan wilderness. Just as Lopez raises her rifle, a bunch of cute wolf babies emerge from their snowy home.

Jennifer Lopez plays a deadly assassin in Netflix film The Mother.Directed by Niki Caro (Mulan), the action thriller follows an assassin who comes out of hiding to protect her estranged daughter.A synopsis reads: “A deadly female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men.”Lopez also serves as a producer alongside Benny Medina, Roy Lee and Marc Evans. The film’s script is by Misha Green (Lovecraft Country) and Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton).Lucy Paez plays 12-year-old Zoe, the daughter of the titular Mother.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In a movie career that stretches back 25 years, Jennifer Lopez has on occasion done flaked-out underworld thriller romance (“Out of Sight”), capery action (“Parker”) and revenge (“Enough”). Yet she has never placed herself at the center of such a down-and-dirty, grimly overwrought, execute-now-and-ask-questions-later B-movie as “The Mother.” I’m tempted to call the film “minimalist,” because if you consider its bare-bones screenplay (by three writers!), its convoluted utilitarian set-up, its 2D villains, and its essential formulaic momentum, it’s a prime example of action filmmaking made basic. Yet “The Mother” is a Netflix action movie, which means that it has a certain flavor of ambition mixed into its pulp stew. The movie, which should have been 90 minutes long (it’s 116), is lumpy and inflated, it’s sketchy yet a touch grandiose, and it’s full of tersely dramatized scenes that somehow feel overly broad. Lopez, as a military sniper turned broker of underground arms deals turned FBI informant turned savagely cool-headed protector of her 12-year-old daughter, is playing a badass not so far removed from those played by Jason Statham or (in his grade-B prime) Bruce Willis, and she’s up to the task. She shoots, she stabs, she chops windpipes, she motorcycles down stone stairways in one of those chase-through-an-ancient-city action scenes (this one takes place in Havana), she tortures a man by punching him with a fist wrapped in barb wire, she grimaces in muscle-torn agony but mostly looks frozen and implacable. Even more important, she puts her own spin on those familiar motions.

The Mother” is like a lot of Netflix action-dramas of late: A mix of different genres with hints of a darker, possibly richer story, that ended up being excised due to budget and/or time constraints. There is a lot of well-worn inspiration to be found in its familiar plot, from the survivalist parent/daughter relationship found in the 2011 feature “Hanna” to another Jennifer Lopez feature, 2018’s “Second Act” in which Lopez’s character is also at odds with a daughter she gave up at birth named Zoe. All of this is to say a film like “The Mother” shouldn’t work, and it doesn’t completely gel 100 percent.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were seemingly caught in the middle of another public argument this week! But is there actually more to the story?!

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Jennifer Lopez and the team behind “The Mother” are already thinking about a sequel. “I think it would be ‘The Daughter,’” Lopez told me Wednesday night at the premiere of the new Netflix action thriller. In the film, Lopez plays a former assassin who is pulled back into her deadly work when her 12-year-old daughter’s (Lucy Paez) life is put in danger. Paez agreed. “The sequel will definitely be ‘The Daughter,’” the young actor said. Not only does Lopez’s character kill at least a couple dozen men in the movie, but the actor’s impressive stunt work also includes motorcycle chases and gunfights while riding a snowmobile. “I was achy, but not hurt,” Lopez said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done an action movie like this. I do a lot of my own stunts because I’m athletic. But I have kids so I’m not going to risk anything.”

Jennifer Lopez is opening up about her newest action thriller, The Mother.

They can’t keep their hands to themselves! Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck showed off their love at the premiere of the singer’s new movie, The Mother, in Los Angeles at the Westwood Regency Village Theater on Wednesday, May 10.   

Jennifer Lopez is celebrating the premiere of her new film with her man by her side!Lopez hit  red carpet Wednesday with husband Ben Affleck and the pair were all smiles as they posed for pics. Dressed in a glittering long taupe coat, matching skirt and bra top, J.Lo was chic as ever as she put a modern twist on the power suit.