A few months ago I was at the movies and I saw the very first trailer for Ricki and the Flash. As soon as I saw Meryl Streep up on the big screen, I smiled. I knew immediately, without watching anything else in the trailer, I would be buying my ticket and going to this film. The studio could have saved the trouble of putting together a trailer as far as I was concerned.  All they needed to do was put up the words, “Meryl Streep is going to be in a new movie.”

That’s sufficient information for me! I see her name and I know not only am I going to be at the theater, but sitting next to me, cradling a large bag of popcorn heavily marinated in butter, will be my mom.

Some families are into sports. Some are all about decorating for holidays. But in our family, we have a Streep tradition. If Meryl Streep is in a film, my mother and I will make every attempt to see it and to see it together.

This fantastic tradition started in the mid-'80s (as most great trends often have) and continued even when I went away to college and then later traveled across the country to work (ironically, in the movie business). Somehow, usually over a holiday, we were able to catch up with our Streep films. Now that we live together as part of a multigenerational home, our Meryl tradition is easier and much more fun to manage.

For a number of years we had distance as our hurdle to seeing Meryl movies, and now I have the hurdle of finding a babysitter for my son. We have endured waiting months to see a movie together, so now locating someone to hang out with my six-year-old for a few hours seems like a piece of cake.

Streep’s newest release, Ricki and the Flash, obviously had me before the trailer began to roll. When I saw that Ricki also stars her daughter, Mamie Gummer, I think I may have gone into fan overdrive. Mother-daughter films are always on my must-watch movie list. I’m an unapologetic sap for this kind of relationship captured on film.

One of my all-time favorite mother-daughter movies of all times is Postcards from the Edge. It stars Streep and Shirley MacLaine in the film adaptation of Carrie Fisher’s hilarious novel about her relationship with her mom (among other things). My own mother could easily pass for MacLaine’s little sister so when we watched this movie together we laughed in a way that may have alarmed other moviegoers. It happens. Own your laughter, people!

Meryl also made us sob in One True Thing. The mother-daughter movie with Streep and Renée Zellweger was complicated and frustrating and heartbreaking. This is a film I have problems making my way through on repeat viewings because I often end up yelling at the characters too much and needing to walk away.

Seeing Streep as the mom to Uma Thurman’s love interest in the movie Prime was, well, I would have liked to have seen more of her (Streep, that is). The idea of a bizarre sort of triangle between therapist, patient and son was an interesting one but Streep didn’t get to flex her Streepness very much. As much as I adore Uma, we bought our ticket for Streep…

While not exactly a mother-daughter role, my mom and I loved Streep in Devil Wears Prada. Who didn’t? (seriously, if you didn’t, let’s talk it out.) I liked seeing women who love their jobs in this film. My mom and I both were working jobs with long, long, long hours when this movie came out and we related to the movie on multiple levels.

Streep in August, Osage County was an intense watch for us. All of the characters in the film are wading through so much sorrow and confusion. Streep, as the matriarch of the family, played her part very well, but it’s such a brutal character and not one exactly to root for.

When I imagine my perfect mother-daughter film I don’t think of a storybook movie. I like my characters to have rich backstories and raw edges. I also need to be able to see the thread of love - even if the thread has become a bit unraveled or stretched thin - I like to know it is there. Not every mother-daughter story has a perfect beginning, middle or end. In a film I do like to see an effort to resolve conflicts, if there are any. Streep’s project choices get us the closest to my ideal.

My mother and I watched Ricki and the Flash this weekend and one of the things we both noticed was the audience in the theater: it seemed to be comprised of a lot of mother-daughter duos. Rock on! There were teen girls sitting together, and their moms sitting behind them and mothers and daughter pairs sitting next to each other. This is exactly the kind of film my mom and I would have gone to see together when I was in high school because there is so much to talk about afterward.

The film is rated PG-13 and emotionally mature teens would enjoy the music and family dynamics played out within the film. It’s always interesting to get a snapshot of someone else’s life and their choices. After the film my mother and I talked about the choices Ricki made and about the bond she still had with her children. We also talked about the mental health issues in the plot and how the entire family navigated one character’s depression.

Since these topics aren’t always the easiest to take on, movies like these can be jumping-off places for great conversation. Streep’s films continue to create that spark for me and my mother. Our Streep tradition will continue!

Dresden Shumaker is a writer, advocate and appreciator of movie popcorn. She chronicles her adventures in single parenting on CreatingMotherhood.