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My son is 13 now, but I've been showing him interesting movies since he was 3 or 4.
He took a shine early on to M. Hulot, Mon oncle is our favorite.
Chaplin and The Great Dictator was also one of his favorites. He saw it right around the time he was learning about WW11 in school, so it was a jumping off point for a lot of discussions.
He also loves Laurel and Hardy and Sons of the Desert is one of their best, but the more obscure Utiopia is good as well.
The Mouse that Roared is a wonderful Peter Sellers movie that he also really liked, and from that we went to the Pink Panther movies. (Imagine how funny a man in a donkey suit who loses his back end seems for the first time!)
In response to the LW who said there were no movies on here for black kids, being black myself, I remember some things from my childhood. I would direct her to Sounder with Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield, Man and Boy, a very early Bill Cosby western, and much more fun, Uptown Saturday Night, and it's sequel, Let's do it Again, with Cosby and Sidney Poitier. Maybe for the older kids, Claudine, with Dihann Carroll and James Earl Jones. My son, who is mixed, came home one day imitating a southern cracker accent, and so I had to rent In the Heat of the Night and explain to him why that accent was like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Movies are handy that way.
He says to tell you now his favorite movies are 2001 and 2010. and he loves to read the books too.
